Credit Cards and Their Shady Policies

[Javakoala]

Well, I got a response from my bank regarding my credit card.

It said:
"The change was made as a result of a review of your account and your overall credit history.
1.) Payment amounts are low in relation to balance over the last 6 billings.

The primary reasons provided by Trans Union Corporation which impacted our decision were:
1.) Serious delinquency, and public record or collection filed.

2.) Proportion of balances to credit limits on bank/national revolving or other revolving accounts is too high."


As for the first reason they gave...  Essentially they're saying that because I only make the minimum monthly payment, they reserve the right to jack up my rate.
How is that legal or fair?

The serious delinquency they mentioned is an old phone bill for $70.  I had been planning to pay that next month when I get some more cash, so that won't be an issue here soon.
So, it's legal for them to raise my interest rate based on an outstanding debt from a totally different company that they have no affiliation with whatsoever?

As for the third reason...  I only have this one credit account and my limit is only $1000.  I've paid almost half of it and have a balance of just over $500.
How is the proportion of that balance too high?

Like I said before, I can't wait for this new bill to pass.  I'm not some stupid person who frivolously uses credit and has a terrible credit history.  I was doing great for a long time and they just all of a sudden raise my rate. 
I'm going to school full-time and getting by the best I can.
Raising my rate in this way only hurts me.
When this bill passes, these greedy corporations are going to get taught a lesson that they can't just step on the little guy whenever they feel like it.

Your life is based on your credit reports. Sad to say, but there it is. Living off the grid like RC is what I did until nearly two years ago and every time a credit report was run for apartments, I was a risk because I had NO CREDIT SCORE. I now have two credit cards. One I use for online  and maintain a balance to show I can handle credit. The other I use once a month to buy groceries with and pay it in full. It is only for back up.

Thinking your late phone bill will vanish once you pay it off is not real. You're human, but the credit report people and those who look at them are not. You will need to do a little work to wipe that turd off your plate.

And if you have a balance over 30% to 40% of your total credit limit on your card, you'll get dinged. It's minor until you start hitting 75% of your total credit. The you'd better move fast to clear it up.

It's a game that is stacked against you. You know that going in and do your best. Do not EVER think any of this will EVER be fair.

What makes me homicidal is when the news shows you some jackass who had 10 credit cards with an average of $50,000 limit per card and they have every one of them maxed out and they are crying about making the minimum payments and why did their rates get jacked up...these are the @ssholes who have made YOUR credit life a huge crapfest. Call me evil, but they deserve to have everything stripped away from them and be forced to work at Wal-Mart and McDonald's until they have a freaking clue about responsibility and money management. Then just shoot them, because there'll be a thousand more right behind them doing the same stupid things.

And I'm a Democrat, and I'll tell you now, don't let this grandstand performance by the president fool you. The corporations and the government own you. If they cut you slack on one hand, you better be watching for where the other hand is.

[Dennis]

When we were first married (read as young and not too smart) my wife and I ran up a large amount of credit card debt, it was easy, charge something, make the minimum payment, not to hard on the wallet. What we didn't realize was that this is exactly what the credit card companies wanted you to do, almost all the money goes to pay interest, practically none goes toward the principal. This guarantees the card company income from you for 20 - 30 years. We had maxed out 5 credit cards and were living from paycheck to paycheck, no way to save money for emergencies, vacations, or even dinner at an actual restruant. We finally found out about Consumer Credit Counselors of America, they negotiated with our creditors, consolidated all our debt into one massive monthly payment that we could barely afford and then they paid our creditors. The monthly payment never changed but as credit cards were paid off more went to the remaining debts.  There were conditions on this deal, if we had 2 cars we must sell one and use the money as a debt payment, only had 1 car so this didn't apply, we had to destroy our credit cards, we could not buy anything on credit, could not use a credit card to purchase anything, not even lunch at Denny's, if we did the deal was off and they would not work with us again. This sort of thing is a big business now but at the time CCC America were the only people doing this and yes a part of our monthly payment went to them. It took about 5 years to pay off everthing but we learned that while credit cards are nice, you can live without one. We now have a Wells Fargo Visa/debit/check card, use the debit card for all purchases, can't spend money if there's not enough in the account. The credit card part is only used to buy gas for the cars, about 3 times a month and because that too comes straight out of the checking account again you can't spend it if you don't have it.
My advice for others is to avoid as much as possible using a credit card, I know that sometimes it's necessary to do this, when you do you should pay off the balance as quickly as possible, preferably in 30 days. Use cash or a debit/check card for everything else, that way you will minimize spending money you don't have.

[ghouck]

One of the WORST, I guess you can call it a scam, is one I witnessed in Killeen Texas, the town just outside of Ft. Hood. SOMEHOW, a rumor got started that if you have kids, the state could and did take them away from families if the kids weren't care for to a specific degree, and that included having a fully furnished home. People were saying that they targeted military families because they were amongst the lowest income families. People also refrained from asking their command for fear of bringing attention to themselves.

All in all, it was BS, likely started by the furniture companies, there were TONS of them around Killeen. So the result was the furniture stores getting TONS of business, and of course they had their own financing plans and store credit cards. It was dumb as hell, especially since you were just going to get transferred sooner or later and the movers were going to bash the crap out of it.