Word: carded
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...someone money. You go to pay him back. He takes your money - and then charges you $15 for having paid him. That might seem unfair. Yet a few years ago, the Government Accountability Office found it to be standard practice for certain credit-card companies when customers made payments over the telephone. The investigatory arm of Congress couldn't say exactly how many card companies imposed such phone-payment fees - nowhere were the firms required to disclose their policies...
...vilification of credit-card companies - not entirely undeserved - has reached fever pitch. On Thursday, President Obama gave a speech in Albuquerque, N.M., and shared some of his thoughts in an effort to help push through a bill, currently in front of Congress, that would overhaul the credit-card industry's interactions with its customers, including the interest rates and fees it charges. "You should not have to worry that when you sign up for a credit card, you're signing away all your rights," the President said. "You shouldn't need a magnifying glass or a law degree to read...
...industry, naturally, is crying foul. Having the flexibility to change interest rates and charge all sorts of fees lets card issuers free up more credit for more people, they argue; folks with lower prospects for repayment pay higher interest rates, while good, creditworthy customers don't have to pay as much. Plus, they say, now is exactly the wrong time to relegislate the lending process. Owing to the credit crunch and soaring default rates, card issuers are already reeling in credit limits and accepting fewer new applications. "There are two ways of managing risk - for a particular borrower and across...
...That sort of thinking, while valid, misses the larger picture. If one brackets the equally legitimate notion that Americans probably should have less access to credit-card borrowing and simply dissects the bill before Congress, one starts to see that the proposed changes aren't really about dictating what a card company can or can't charge borrowers. There's a way to do that: impose interest-rate caps, as many states' usury laws do. That isn't what Congress is on track to do. Instead, the new law, which would build on regulations issued by the Federal Reserve...
...That goal is easily seen in the legislation's key feature: limitations on how card companies treat customers' existing balances. When you sign up for a credit card, you agree to pay a certain interest rate on the balance you carry - you enter into a legal agreement to that end - but historically, your card company has been able to change that rate for all sorts of reasons. Maybe you charge a greater chunk of your credit limit than normal. Maybe you're late on a payment to some other company. In recent years, the difference between the interest rate folks...