In 2001, if memory serves, I accompanied then-Delegate Thelma Drake to a hearing before one of the General Assembly banking committees regarding credit card practices. Speaking before the committee, I provided proof that credit card companies were engaging in unfair practices. My beef was that one company in particular was changing the payment address each month. In doing so, if the bill arrived late (a rather common occurrence) and you tried to make the payment timely anyway, the payment would be late as it had to be re-routed to another address. After hearing from Capital One, the lone credit card issuer based in VA at the time, the committee failed to act.
Today, the Federal Reserve and other regulators have decided to take on the credit card companies. According to this AP report, changes are coming.
The proposed new rules would prohibit:
-Placing unfair time constraints on payments. A payment could not be deemed late unless the borrower is given a reasonable period of time, such as 21 days, to pay;
-Unfairly allocating payments among balances with different interest rates;
-Retroactively raising interest rates on pre-existing balances;
-Placing too-high fees for exceeding the credit limit solely because of a hold placed on the account;
-Unfairly computing balances in a computing tactic known as double-cycle billing;
-Unfairly adding security deposits and fees for issuing credit or making credit available;
-Making deceptive offers of credit.
Of course the industry is against these proposals and no doubt the final rules will be less stringent. But this is a step in the right direction. The article points out that 58% of card-holding households carry balances on their credit cards. Even though I generally don’t carry balances on my credit cards, the proposed changes would be beneficial.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
The credit card industry has been getting out of hand recently hasn’t it? They need to be reigned in.
Of course this is going to cause additional problems. Depriving them of revenue is going to make it more difficult for them to weather the storm caused by the defaults from the high credit risks they extended credit to.
But they still need to be reigned in. Decent credit customers should not have to pay for their bad business decisions, especially when they start resorting to trickery.
That headline is a bit generous, no? We’ll see what emerges.
(And the gov’t inability to adequately regulate credit card companies is most definitely a bipartisan problem. It’s up to all of us to make sure our reps do the right thing in this arena.)
Yes, MB, I agree. It should be Fed proposes to end…
I think I’ll change it 😉
Totally agree this is a bipartisan thing.