Sun, 05 Feb 2006

Credit Card Sharks

I've seen, or been victim of, most of these. My gripe with these practices has less to do with their existence than with the methods by which they're foisted on unsuspecting consumers. I've gotten "Amendments to the User Agreement" from card companies that were literally printed on foolscrap in 2 point type! I needed a magnifying glass to read them! How many folks do you suppose got out their magnifiers to peruse sixteen pages of densely packed legalese? And once they'd read it, how many understood it?

I've also managed to tear up one such document: credit card companies regularly flood my snail mail box with various offers, all of which are marked "Important! Dated Materials Enclosed!" and most of which are simply offers for other credit cards/checks, etc. Note the "most" in that last sentence. For they send out their legitimate legal notices on the same stationary, with the same logos and marking on the envelope. Is this deliberate, to create confusion?

In the not too distant past, we had a word for this. Fraud. And the main culprits were called con artists. I'm beginning to think that most of them have found a new home in the banking business.

Last time I checked, loan sharking was still illegal. The banking industry's questionable practices are fully protected under the law. If ever an industry needed to be more tightly regulated, it's credit card lending. A shark is a shark, even if it wears a suit and works in a building with marble floors.

(link) [The Washington Post]

via MyAppleMenu:Reader

/Politics | 3 writebacks | permanent link

On 2/6/2006 06:03:49
Starlight Bunnybutt wrote

On 2/7/2006 08:06:16
Arwin wrote

Get rid of unwanted cc applications.

On 2/7/2006 08:25:16
Dave H wrote

Wow!

comment...

 
Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
 Name:
 URL:(optional)
 Title: (optional)
 Comments:  
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time