“If you’re not thinking about the card, you might forget to pay the fee, and then you’ll be facing another late fee on top of it,” said Schiffman, 26, a Web designer in Lansing, Michigan. – BL1
So the geniuses of fiscal innovation have come up with yet more cruel and unusurious charges for people who not only aren’t behind on their payments, they aren’t even borrowing on their cards. And it looks like that might just be one straw-in-the-wind2 …
Levin says the banks are rushing to raise rates and fees before new federal guidelines on credit card lending go into effect next February. Fifty percent of Americans say their credit card interest rates have been hiked in the past six months.
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[1]: "Card Firms Add Inactivity Fees to Slow Revenue Loss on Defaults", by Jeff Plungis, Bloomberg, December 1, 2009.
[2]: "Credit Cards’ Holiday ‘Reign of Terror’ ", CBS News, November 30, 2009.
It’s not just credit cards.
I just got a letter from my credit union. It said that, starting January 1, I was going to be charged a $25 fee for the line of credit that I haven’t used since I dunno when.
So, I’m going to sit right down and write that credit union a letter of my own. In it, I’ll tell them to remove that line of credit from my account. Why should I be paying them 25 bucks for something I haven’t used in a month of Sundays?
Moral of the story: It doesn’t matter if your financial institution is a bank or a credit union. Either way, you have to watch ‘em like a shoplifter.
Like Igor, I am disgusted.
The other moral-
Banks have giant bonuses they need to pay- they can’t leave any more cash in the hands of their customers [The folks who are paying to bail them out] than they have to.
My mattress is looking better all the time.