New Credit Card Laws Have Too Many Loopholes?

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and there’s most definitely a will to maintain profits as much as they can, for their shareholders and of course for themselves, for the credit card companies, which were a huge cash machine for so many years because they basically had the run of how to do business,and few limitations on them. For instance, they really did not have any limits imposed on how much might be too much for a late fee.

Or take for example, how they really had a lot of leeway on the reasons they could just jack up someone’s interest rate without a lot of notice, or their monthly payment, without much notice at all, putting severe hardship on some people, or digging themselves into such deep debt that it was nearly hopeless to get out except for paying off the balances with other low interest cards, or resorting to a credit agency that specializes in getting people out of hot water with credit cards.

Let’s face it, credit cards are probably the biggest reason that people get themselves into debt over their heads. Debt that they truly can’t afford, and debt that they really had no business incurring in the first place because it was way more than what they should have been s pending based on the money they bring in.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not getting up on my soapbox here, I was in exactly that position starting in college, and it took me years to dig out, and to finally pay it off. Now, with these new credit card laws, we are going to start to learn the painful lesson that the laws have many loopholes (the laws were meant to protect consumers), which are going to become more and more apparent as time goes on.

The scary part is, we already know some of the loopholes, and this law has been in effect less than two weeks! One of the examples is that credit card companies are now coming up with new fees to charge, and new ways to help recoup their eventual losses that are inevitably going to result from the crack down on abusive practices.

One example I saw of this already on one of my credit cards was a previously uncharged “foreign transaction fee”. My creditor had never charged this fee before, and now it does. They also may even charge something called “inactivity fees”. Yep, that’s right, even if you haven’t used your card in a long time, they may charge you upwards of thirty bucks just because you haven’t used the darn thing.

That’s probably one of the most egregious of them all!

There are also loopholes in the random, and sudden shutdown of accounts at the credit card companies will. They can also increase you minimum payment without much notice, and they can decide to lower your credit limit with virtually no notice at all either. So, even thought this new credit card law is going to protect people in some ways, it also leaves a lot of holes open for creditors to take advantage of consumers.

However, if you are smart with your money, you can still use good, low interest credit cards to your advantage, it’s just knowing how to use them without getting carried away, and that’s the tough part for most people.