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Recent Reviews
- How we pay with plastic will change Monday with new credit card rules
- Eliminating ‘He Said, She Said’ on Loan Modifications
- 10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who’ve Been Screwing You
- The Unemployment Game Show: Are You *Really* Unemployed? – From Mint.com
- Credit card’s newest trick: 79.9 percent interest
- 42% of parents have paid a child’s debt
- More Homeowners Fall Behind on Mortgages
- Problem mortgages hit new high at 14 percent
- Google Tackles Mortgage Market With New Comparison Ads
- Latest bank fee is for paying off credit card on time every month
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How we pay with plastic will change Monday with new credit card rules
New consumer-friendly rules taking effect Monday will mean colossal changes for the 180 million people nationwide who have credit cards — and even millions who don’t.
If you pay with plastic:
- No longer will banks arbitrarily be able to change the interest rate on your balance.
- No longer can they confuse you by changing the date your monthly payment is due.
- No longer can they cut your credit limit, allow you to go over it, then charge a penalty.
And the list goes on.
Read more at: Cleveland Ohio Business News
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{Photography by Jason Rogers}
Credit card’s newest trick: 79.9 percent interest
It’s no mistake. This credit card’s interest rate is 79.9 percent.
The bloated APR is how First Premier Bank, a subprime credit card issuer, is skirting new regulations intended to curb abusive practices in the industry. It’s a strategy other subprime card issuers could start adopting to get around the new rules.
Typically, the First Premier card comes with a minimum of $256 in fees in the first year for a credit line of $250. Starting in February, however, a new law will cap such fees at 25 percent of a card’s credit line.
In a recent mailing for a preapproved card, First Premier lowers fees to just that limit — $75 in the first year for a credit line of $300. But the new law doesn’t set a cap on interest rates. Hence the 79.9 APR, up from the previous 9.9 percent.
Read more at: Finance.yahoo.com
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{Photography by Hans Gerwitz}
Latest bank fee is for paying off credit card on time every month
You may believe that your exemplary behavior shields you from unexpected credit card fees. Sadly, that is no longer the case.
Starting next year, Bank of America will charge a small number of customers an annual fee, ranging from $29 to $99. The bank has characterized the fee as experimental. But card holders who have never carried a balance or paid late fees could be among those affected.
Citigroup, meanwhile, has started charging annual fees to card holders who don’t put more than a specific amount on their cards, typically $2,400 a year. Other banks are charging inactivity fees if customers don’t use their credit cards during a specific period of time. You heard that right: You could be spanked for staying out of debt.
Read more at: USA Today
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{Photography by Andres Rueda}
Austan Goolsbee – Credit Card Bill Kicks in August 20, 2009
Austan Goolsbee of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers talks about the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 – also known as the Credit Card Bill of Rights – which he worked hard on and which kicks in today. Watch the video to get a taste of the types of credit card headaches you won’t have to deal with anymore.
DefCon: ‘Credit Hackers’ Win the Credit Card Game … Legally
Hundreds of “credit hackers” are legally gaming financial institutions by taking advantage of loopholes in the U.S. credit-reporting system, a security researcher says — warning that identity thieves could follow suit.
Christopher Soghoian, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center, took a security expert’s eye to the tricks already in use by a healthy subculture of clever consumers who have managed to garner zero-interest loans and erase some information from their credit profiles. He’s presenting his findings Saturday at the DefCon hacker convention.
“The techniques outlined in this paper are not traditional hacking,” he said in an interview. “All that is being done is taking advantage of the formalized structure of the process.”
In his paper (.pdf), Soghoian highlights several approaches perfected by the credit hackers.
In one ploy, the consumer generates a massive amount of quick credit by carefully timing simultaneous applications from different lenders. This takes advantage of the fact that it takes several days for an inquiry to appear on a consumer’s credit report, leaving issuing banks blind to the parallel applications.
Read more at: WIRED Magazine
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{Photography by Ted Percival}
Chase dumping former WaMu card holders
Steven Lobdell points out an image on Chase bank’s Web site that says “Welcome WaMu customers. We’re here for you.”
But, apparently not for him. Lobdell is one of a group of former Washington Mutual credit card customers who were abruptly dumped by Chase in recent days. He holds two Chase cards; both were canceled as of July 15.
“It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” he said. “I think Chase is two-faced….We were good enough for Washington Mutual, why not good enough for Chase?” Across the Internet, thousands of former WaMu customers are expressing the same outrage. They say Chase is dumping them as customers, despite their solid payment records.
JP Morgan Chase & Co. acquired Washington Mutual and its troubled portfolio of credit cards in September, at the height of the banking system collapse. While Chase has recently set about to tidy up the ranks of its credit card holders, consumers are bearing the brunt of the cleaning. Two weeks ago, Chase began forcing some customers to raise their minimum monthly payments from 2 to 5 percent. And now, it’s cutting off some customers all together. Thousands of complaints from former Washington Mutual customers can be found on personal finance blogs all across the Web.
Read more at The RED TAPE Chronicles
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{Photography by Striatic}
Network Solutions breach exposes nearly 600,000
Network Solutions is investigating a breach on its servers that may have led to the theft of credit card data of 573,928 people who made purchases on Web sites hosted by the company.
Networks Solutions notified 4,343 of its nearly 10,000 e-commerce merchant customers on Friday about the breach. It affects 573,928 cardholders whose name, address, and credit card number were exposed between March 12 and June 8, said Susan Wade, a spokeswoman for Network Solutions.
Mysterious code was discovered in early June on servers hosting e-commerce customer sites during routine maintenance, she said. The company called in a third-party forensics team to help with the investigation, and the team was able to crack some of the code on July 13, determining that it could be related to credit card data, she added.
Credit card transactions were intentionally diverted by an unknown source from certain Network Solutions servers to servers outside, Network Solutions wrote in an e-mail to merchant customers.
“So we notified law enforcement and began the process of notifying our customers,” Wade said. “At this point, we don’t have a reason to believe that (the data) has been used, but we are working with the credit card companies,” nonetheless.
Network Solutions also is paying to have credit-monitoring specialist TransUnion help the merchants notify their customers according to data breach notification laws in effect in certain states. Affected consumers will get 12 months of free credit-monitoring services.
It’s unknown how the malicious code got onto the system and where it came from, Wade said. (Read more at: cnet)
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{Photography by Andres Rueda}
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Barclaycard cuts minimum repayment on credit cards
Barclaycard extended to some of its customers a lower minimum repayment – 1.5% Vs. the prior 2.25% of the remaining balance. This will give some of its customers additional flexibility in these tough economic times. A Barclaycard spokesman said: “We are doing this to help customers. This is an option we are giving to selected customers for them to be able to make a reduced minimum repayment for a limited period if the customer chooses to do so. We understand that some customers may appreciate this additional flexibility during the current economic circumstances.” (Read more at: Compare Top Cards)
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{Photography by Gregg O’Connell}
Hidden Credit Card Fees
Credit card debt is one of the main concerns the average American household is faced with today, but before one can make an efforts to reduce credit card debt, it is important to look at some of the ways the credit card companies trick the public into paying more than they should by sticking them with those credit card fees and rates that are covertly hidden within the fine print.
There are many fees that can be found within the credit card terms and conditions, fees such as late fees, overlimit fees, balance transfer fees, and ATM cash advance fees. Yes, these are hidden fees and must read very carefully, but let’s face it; we all know about those tricky fees. Let’s talk about some ways that the credit card companies really trick the average card holder: . . . (Read more at: Professional Debt Advisor)
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{Photography by: Faithful Chant}
Plastic Wars: Credit vs Debit
Credit or debit? – an important question for those trying to come out ahead in recessionary times. The answer can be a little complicated. It depends on a few things, namely, your spending habits, your ability to pay your bills on time, and the total dollar amount that you pay with debit and credit. These are the variables that you can control. Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones.
What remains to be seen are the clever tricks credit card providers will play in light of the major reform that was recently signed into law by President Obama that will go into effect in 2010. About the best you can do is take advantage of the existing rules and set yourself up for future financial success. (Read more at: Mint.com)
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{Photography by Orphan Jones}
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