Senate Investigates Credit Card Company Practices

[CatWoman]

I saw some of this hearing on yesterday and was surprised it wasn't mentioned here on DU:

Can I say again how much I like having a Democratic majority? A hearing to examine protecting individuals against predatory corporate practices. Can you imagine a hearing like this happening during the 109th Congress? Me neither. This almost makes up for the Democrats caving on the bankruptcy bill. Almost.

Courier Journal:

It's time the federal government began protecting Americans from unsafe credit cards, like it does from unsafe toasters and cars, consumer advocates contend.

Credit-card companies routinely offer cards that have been loaded with tricks and traps that consumers don't know about or understand, causing millions of Americans to become hopelessly mired in debt, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee during an oversight hearing Thursday on the industry.

Those tricks and traps, Warren said, include hiking interest rates when a cardholder falls behind in payments to other creditors, charging fees for payment by telephone and a practice called double-cycle billing. That's when a cardholder, for example, pays $90 of a $100 charge but then next month the consumer is charged interest on the entire amount rather than just the $10 balance.

It takes a lawyer to figure out the terms and conditions of most credit-card contracts, Warren and other consumer advocates complained. Increasingly, credit-card companies are targeting college students, military personnel, senior citizents and the disabled with pre-approved offers, the critics said.


http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/01/27/senate-investigates-credit-card-company-practices/

[salin]

1. now add the new trend of folks using credit cards to pay medical

bills - how quickly can you say... Danger! Will Robinson! Danger!

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. They can invesitgate the smarmy loan sharking policy of "universal default"

and make it illegal.

[Wapsie B]

5. Or shut down these paycheck loan places.

Who the hell owns these companies? Seems to me they put mafia hoods in jail for stuff like this.

[ClintonTyree]

3. Scum of the Earth....

it's criminal the way these companies have been allowed to "police" themselves, writing their own regulations and laws with the Republics turning a blind eye to it all. I hope the Democrats rein them in because they are OUT OF CONTROL! Any Democrat that abets these scum sucking pigs in their usury should be ridden out of Washington on a rail.
This, after the country bailed their asses out of the savings and loan scandal that the BUSH'S just happened to be right in the middle of. :grr: Strange, that. Wherever you find corruption and theft of government funds on a colossal scale, there you'll also find the Bush family, stealing other people's money. Just a coincidence, right? :eyes:

[Wapsie B]

4. I wonder how feasible it would be to repeal the bankruptcy law?

Or have corporations subject to the same law as individuals? Or at the very least cease and desist these pre-approved credit card offers?

[porphyrian]

6. I'll kick that. - n/t

[madfloridian]

7. They should repeal parts of the bankruptcy bill, or get rid of it.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/699

Now they will investigate? After two groups of Democrats BEGGED to be able to vote for it by writing Hastert?

[Rosemary2205]

8. fucking loan sharks!! - If this doesn't curl your nose hairs nothing will.

About 5 years ago we had a nearly fatal car accident. Hubby was in the hospital for 4 months - rehabed another 10 months and I was in and out of hospitals and rehab homes for nearly 4 years. Mainly because of preditory practices by the banks and collections agents we were forced to declare bankruptcy - in spite of 24 years of SPOTLESS credit history. We didn't owe very much but We were all totally stunned at the nastiness of these people - the medical collectors were the worst.

if they'd just kept their shorts on and treated us like human beings they would have eventually gotten everything we owed. We finally got a settlement big enough to pay all the medical bills. We finally got back to work and are able to pay off what little we owed along with the normal interest in that time period. Instead they wanted to get nasty and jack the rate up to 34% and add on $1000's in late fees. They wanted to call my home up to 30 times a day. They stalked my family and even my neighbors. One collections agent picked out my 5 immediate neighbors and called all of them 10-15 times a day for 3 weeks straight. Another went knocking on their doors. They even stalked the nursing home where I was rehabing after my 6th surgery. A medical collector actually came into my nursing home room at 4 am to yell at me about paying my medical bills. - Thankfully a male nursing assistant was strong enough to hold the guy up against a wall until the cops arrived to arrest his sorry butt. Another went and stalked my 7 yr old neice at her school and told her if we didn't pay our bills they were going to put us and her parents in jail. -- All of this while we were still in and out of hospitals!

Calling the cops didn't stop them - they just sold the collection to another agency and got someone different to stalk us. Calling a lawyer stopped it within 2 months.

I always thought ill of the "ambulance chasers" - those personal injury lawyers. But my experience taught me why they are needed. Working with one of them from day one would have saved us so much grief and would have avoided us having to declare bankruptcy. If you ever get injured by someone else the smartest thing you can do is call the lawyer before you even deal with the workers comp or insurance people. If things go smooth then you just hedged your bets, but let one little problem develop. Just one, and that lawyer will earn all his money and then some.