Word: payments
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...morning mail has been reviving unmerry Yuletide recollections in millions of households, as the bills have cascaded in. From department stores for the toys, furs, watches, gowns, cameras, TV games bought with the "holiday money" that the stores sent out in November (how far away that "first payment not due till February" seemed then). From credit-card companies for the drinks so expansively signed for that day the office staff knocked off early to spend the afternoon toasting one another's health. In many households those bills will not be paid for months, during which time the families will...
...credit counselors generally advise against it. True, the debtor will reduce his monthly bills, since he will usually be replacing several short-term loans with a single longer-term debt. But, says New York's Gerard Lareau, "what happens is that the debtor will have one monthly payment of $150 or so instead of the $250 he paid before. He'll think he has $100 a month more to spend and he'll start using his credit cards again...
...make the debtor sign an agreement to take on no more credit and to hand over all his charge cards. Often a counselor will scissor the cards to pieces before the debtor's eyes. The service then negotiates extended repayment of the loans and collects a fixed monthly payment from the debtor that it parcels out among the creditors...
Besides defaulted debtors, the Credit Society has many other discontented citizens: people who cannot understand the terms of a time-payment contract; buyers infuriated by billing errors; consumers, especially women, who believe they have been denied credit for capricious reasons. Ironically, by making credit seem essential to comfortable living, lenders have sharpened the grievances of all these groups enough to make them a potent political force. Responding to their gripes, Congress in the past nine years has enacted five laws to strengthen the hand of debtors in dealing with creditors, and it will consider some tough new legislation this session...
...requirements of the recent laws: creditors must spell out interest, financing and other charges. A department store, for example, must inform buyers that the interest charge of l½% a month on the unpaid balance in a revolving-credit account amounts to 18% a year. Debtors may withhold payment of a bill they believe to be incorrect, and the creditor must explain the billing within 90 days. A credit cardholder is liable for only $50 in purchases that someone else charges on a lost or stolen card. If a merchant or lender turns down an application for credit, he must...