Prime Rate Credit

You may notice, you are probably one of about 30 million people to have received a certain notice from Federal Courts that you are entitled to a sum of $25 or more or less due to a class action settlement in which people have accused credit and debit card companies of currency conversion mistakes that involved hidden fees and other hidden costs that consumers overpaid for conversions of foreign currencies when making charges on their credit or debit cards.

Both myself and my live in boyfriend have received these notices, and to be honest they gave both of a us quite a start because they are addressed from a Federal Court. Of course, everyone’s initial response to letters that are so official looking and seem to come from a federal office of some sort is always intimidating! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a start in my heart when I’ve received IRS notices, only to find that they are sending my the request for my quarterly estimated payments!

Apparently there were millions of people affected by this improper and undisclosed charging of foreign currency conversion, and the credit card companies are going to have to payout big time for this. The suit was settled for some $336 mil. and this payout is go to various affected parties in sums that are pretty small once all 30 million people are accounted for.

There are several credit card companies offering several different types of credit cards such some of the best airline miles credit cards, credit cards for bad credit and balance transfer credit cards, that are involved in the settlement of the suit, and they will all be paying out various amounts of money to contribute to the class action that was brought against them. I always wonder in these suits, who brings this to anyone’s attention?

I personally just travelled overseas, and I certainly didn’t notice any disparity in the conversion rates on the items I charged, but then again, it seems like an awful lot of calculating would have to go into this, and time - and that’s not something I have time for! One wonders who finds this stuff out, at any rate! It is important to note that the defendants claimed they did not do anything wrong, and settled the suit just to avoid further costs to the company and to their shareholders, as well as prolonging the case, which is something most companies never want to do!

News this morning is that the Federal Reserve, or “The Fed” as it is affectionately termed by those in the financial industries and those of us who just read this stuff, maybe be lowering interest rates soon in an effort to ease credit worries and the currently worsening economy due to the mortgage crisis.

The US government already authorized a forced freeze on certain types of mortgage loans in an effort to ease the stress of increasing interest rates of mortgages on those with certain types of mortgage loans on their homes. However, reportedly this freeze did not give all who own a home and have a mortgage a break, only a specific sector was influenced by this decision.

The Federal Reserve, under Bernanke’s leadership, has already cut the interest rates twice this year to relieve some of the mortgage and housing crisis, but it is said that more cuts may be needed to provide any real type of relief. See the mortgage calculator and loan comparison calculator for examples of what types of loans and mortgages are available out there for consumer now, and you can get more of an idea what I’m talking about. All this stuff is so confusing sometimes!

Bernanke has said that it is the Fed’s responsibility to keep the economy moving, and further rate cuts may be necessary to keep that going, and to keep the stock market active, since before this housing crisis, the stock market was much more busy with foreign investment, and now many foreign investors are reluctant to “invest in the US” since the fears about housing and the mortgage credit crunch.

I recently read some interesting information about how many airliners charge a lot of extra fees, mostly (speculative of course) to regain profits that seem to be so elusive to airliners, especially after 9/11. They even may incur a lot of fees for airline miles achieved through the use of special airline miles credit cards that earn free mileage every time they are used for purchases, so one must be careful to read the fine print when planning a trip using their miles apparently.

The fees I read about concerning our biggest concern (since we have one of the best airline miles credit cards hee hee), are the ones that concern redeeming these miles. Apparently some airlines will charge for not giving them sufficient notice when booking a ticket with free miles. It depends on the airline, but as little as three days notice and as much as 20-30 days notice may constitute “adequate notice” to them, and if adequate notice isn’t given, you might be looking at some sort of surcharge when redeeming miles.

There are also many additional fees that are added when you call and book a ticket, or book a ticket in person. Hmm, seems like a lot of airlines REALLY want you to book tickets online nowadays, huh? Not that I’m complaining about that, because probably more than anyone I know, I am the queen of booking and paying bills online these days. God forbid I have to pick up the phone or make an appointment or pay a bill in person!

There also are many times fees for cancelling a flight or trying to change flights, depending on the timing and the airline, and many times they may charge an additional fee for flying stand by. While some of these fees are apparent, some are not, and you really don’t know what you’re paying until you get your bill or look at your receipt, or heck, if the salesperson looks at you and tells you your total in some cases!

But we usually pay, because, well, you kind of have to, especially with flying, it’s not like you really have a choice many times, since you are limited on when you can travel and know what kind of ticket you need and when you need it for, you’re a prisoner to these fees. I guess it goes with the territory though - we all know that traveling is expensive these days, the cost of fuel is way up, and they do have to pay a lot of employees!

I have to admit, although I’m quite happy right now with my United airline miles credit card, and have no intentions of jumping ship any time soon, I was tempted also to sign up the US Airways airline miles credit card from Visa.

They said they were only offering it to people that were on their flights and already flying with them, and they actually offered on my trip to Costa Rica and back from Costa Rica, on the plane as a presentation done by their flight attendants. They really wanted to get sign ups for this card apparently, because what they were offering seemed extremely generous and on the border of being too good to be true.

The US airways may qualify as one of the best airline miles credit cards, because they offered the following. They said that if you applied and were accepted as a customer, you would get one free round trip ticket for yourself just for signing up, and also get $99 accompanying tickets for another passenger of your choice. Pretty good, huh!?

Also they said there would be periodical offers and promotions for extremely cheap airfares to their customers, and they would have promotions quite often to buy accompanying passenger tickets for the $99 price as they offered at the beginning. There were several other benefits, and the card I believe had a yearly participation fee of $75, which is almost the standard now for airline miles credit cards as far as I know.

I can see why several people on each flight where this offer was presented had asked for the application sheets. I was tempted, but I figured that I want to really concentrate all my mile earning on my United card since United is a known quantity (although I did have a pleasant experience with US Airways, even never flying with them before). I’d say about twenty people on each flight asked for the applications, so that was some pretty smart marketing on US Airways’s part!

I can’t help but notice that both mine and my boyfriend’s credit cards seemed to have stepped up their security measures lately. Perhaps it is because credit card and identity theft and fraud are on the up this time of year, when the holidays have people putting record amounts of cash on their credit cards, but we have both experienced our credit card companies temporarily shutting down our credit cards until we called them to verify that our last few charges were, indeed, valid and desired charges on our credit cards.

They didn’t think the activity was normal I guess, because we happened to have a lot of charges, all in a row, that came from online and over the phone. I guess that any time many creditors see activity that seems out of the norm or a little higher than usual, their radars go up and they kick in to protective mode now, because I don’t remember having to verify so many charges before this.

An example is that today, a usual charge that appears monthly on my business credit card charge, was declined. I knew that I was well under the maximum spending limit on the card, and was more than on time with my credit card payments, since I usually just pay the existing balance whenever I can during the month, so I knew that it couldn’t have been declined for any reason on my end, but I had a hunch that they were just doing some random security check and froze the account.

Although I do wish they could do this some other way without freezing the account, I do understand also that they are doing it for my security. Further more, the particular charge they declined is a customary charge that has appeared every month on my statement without contest from me since I’ve had the credit card in the first place. Even if you don’t have a credit card for bad credit, or have not made excessive charges or been late, they will freeze your account for what they deem excessive or suspicious activity.

I called the company, and was put on hold for a few minutes before I got a representative to talk to (I never take matters like this through the automated system, even if there is an option, in this particular case I also needed the charge to go through almost immediately as business depended on it).

I was asked to verify that several charges that had just gone through that day were indeed my charges and that I had authorized them. Once I had done that, and of course verified my social security number and mother’s maiden name, they said they would activate my account again almost immediately. You might experience something like this no matter who you have as your carrier, especially since credit card charges and fraud are particularly rampant around the holidays.