Find the best credit card offers online.A lot of consumers have been unpleasantly surprised by unknown credit card terms because they missed reading the fine print in their credit card agreements. A new law, the Credit CARD Act of 2009, is going live next month. It will supposedly bring a fairer atmosphere to the credit industry for consumers. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen.
With this new law, card holders can expect some protection against abusive card company practices. Exactly how protected consumers will be is still up for debate, considering the generous length of time the government gave companies to prepare for it. Card companies are nothing if not creative, specifically in protecting profits, not so much in making cards friendlier to consumers.
This new law will make it tougher for credit card companies to hike interest rates. It will also stop some of the better known predatory card practices such as double cycle billing. However, card companies are now way ahead of consumers. They have already raised interest rates to exorbitant heights before this new law hinders them from doing so. Consumers are fuming, but that’s not even half of it.
While this new law provides interest rate hike protection, it seems to have largely stayed away from putting regulations on fees. According to Reasons Financial Advisors financial expert, Mark Gilbert, this new legislation does not specifically address fees and there is basically no prohibition for them. He expects banks to raise fees in “almost every area.”
“Almost every area” covers a lot of ground. A few fairly obvious ones are fees for balance transfers from one card to another, transaction fees for overseas card transactions, late payment fees and annual fees which may be a new one for those who have not seen them before. In the case of annual fees, card companies had actually phased them out in the last few years, but they are now making a comeback.
Consumers who think that they can avoid getting hit by fees by limiting their card usage or avoiding charging on their cards altogether are in for a nasty surprise. “Inactivity fees” are now beginning to circulate among card company rhetoric. Inactivity fees are fees charged to holders who do not use their cards or whose use do not reach a certain limit for a given amount of time.
Good thing that this new law requires credit card companies to warn holders about significant changes in their credit terms. Consumers should therefore make a point of reading any communication from their card company and see to it that they understand the details.
