North West Florida Republican

Government intervention normally just irritates me to no end. However this is one of those cases where it is needed. It doesn’t cost the government billions to implement and will hopefully help everyone out there.

Credit card companies have been practicing some very shady deals in the last couple of years. That is the only reason that this legislation came about. Interest Hikes for little or no reason. Giving consumers large lines of credit with zero interest that shoots up with all that interest compounded and backdated to the begining of the line of credit. Lots of different things. Here is a list of practices that the legislation should prohibit according to Consumer Affairs.

The legislation would prohibit:

• Bait-and-switch interest rate and fee hikes for any or no reason at all during the life of the card;

• Assessing hidden and unfair interest rate charges by charging interest on balances already paid off;

• Unjustifiably maximizing interest charges by requiring consumers to pay off balances with lower interest rates before those with higher rates;

• Charging late fees when consumers mail their payments seven days in advance of the due date;

• Applying certain unfair interest rate hikes retroactively to balances incurred under the old rate.

If you haven’t been hit by one of these, count yourself lucky. Most people don’t know that you can complain to the credit card companies when they do something weird like this and they will fix it in some cases. In other cases they will refuse.

My mom was hit with several late fees because she paid on the date that it was due. The only way she got those fees back was because I asked her to call the company and demand that they fix the problem. They were more than happy to do so.

I had a credit card increase in interest by 12 percent just because my credit score dropped 40 points. I received a notification on it but didn’t realize that it was an increase and why it increased until I called the credit card company and asked why it increased.

These are just two examples of what this legislation should help protect you against. Many Republicans voted against this.

Congressman Jeff Miller was one of those. I’ll see if I can get an explanation out of him later on.

Congressman Allen Boyd voted for this.

Of course it still has to pass through the Senate but maybe something can be done about the deceptive practices of credit card companies.

Filed under: General Posts, National Politics