Find the best credit card offers online.If it wasn’t obvious enough already, a new study once again proclaims that credit card companies are still being as predatory as they were before government decided to pass the Credit CARD Act. If anything, they’ve actually upped the ante on their shenanigans, the study shows. It’s no surprise to consumers who, for the past few months, have been bearing the brunt of what credit card companies called “market realities” and what most everyone else calls “gouging”.
The Credit CARD Act was made with good intentions which might be why it is of little surprise that the whole thing blew up on the American consumer’s face, ironically the ones who were supposed to benefit the most from it. The Credit CARD Act was made to stop the predatory tactics being done by credit card companies. It would put a stop on arbitrary interest hikes, retroactive rate hikes, universal defaults and sudden credit card agreement changes without prior notice. These are actually just a few of what the Credit CARD Act intends to do. However, for all of its muster, the Credit CARD Act had one particularly nasty Achilles’ heel.
Early this year, when lawmakers where readying the Act, credit card companies lobbied for a delay from Congress. In their argument, they stated that they would need time to adapt their computer systems, create new sales materials and rewrite disclosure documents for their customers. These seemed to be valid reasons and Congress allowed the delay, setting the full activation of the Credit CARD Act for 2010, with the bulk of the Act getting activated on February. Current facts show that was a big mistake.
According to a study from the Safe Credit Cards Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts, credit cards are now more expensive for American consumers even when the Federal Reserve set interest rates at historically low values, allowing banks and credit card companies to borrow cheaply. The study also showed that credit card companies hiked interest rates on new credit cards at an average of 20% during the months of January to July. That does not even include the last four months when credit card companies intensified their rate and fee hikes.
Lawmakers are finally doing something about this entire fiasco. A bill has been introduced by the House Financial Services Committee aimed at activating the credit card earlier, on December 1. There are also bills in House and Senate aimed at freezing interest rates on existing balance for the credit cards currently in circulation, estimated at 700 million cards.
This all seems well and good until one takes into account the fact that most of the things that credit card companies set out to do to maximize profits even at the cost of consumers have already been done. “Too little, too late” seems to be appropriate in this situation
