Have you received a ton of credit card offers in the mail? Have you received a few notes from your existing credit card companies raising your interest rates? The credit card companies are positioning themselves to reap, or rape, as much money as they can before the new regulations take affect in 2010. When the new regulations take affect, credit card companies: Can't raise the interest rate retroactively, meaning if they raise your rate it can't affect existing balances. If they say something is interest free, it has to be interest free and not a smoke screen for deferred interest charges. Those are just two of the new regulations. I am paying off my credit card so that , when the regulations hit, there are no existing balances. The company obviously noticed this, and has been sending all the little offers they can to try to keep my balance up. Have you had this happen yet?
Now that you mention it, I did get something from a card about heavy penalties for late payments. As far as I am concerned, their just telling me they don't want my business anymore. After paying faithfully when I had balances, I see no reason to be talked to like I'm dirt.
I've received some letters from the credit card companies in the last few months. Thankfully at the moment, we're able to manage our cards and pay them off at the end of each month. I've definitely carried my share of balances from month to month in the past.
I am going to close one of my accounts when it is paid off, even if this brings down my score. I'm at the point where I really don't care, anymore.
I don’t have a credit card but I am very familiar with what you are talking about because I used to be a telemarketer for credit cards. I think that you are missing the point that they are trying to do that ever since they have started.
I think Twiceshy is referring to some actual changes in the regulations, maybe that will take place in the US? Of course they've always been trying to get you to use their cards. Once my wife and I were in a bank that was renegotiating our mortgage and they tried to get us to take one of their credit cards. My wife pulled out the main one we used at the time from another bank, which had a picture of a dog and cat on it, and benefited the Humane Society. The bank employee dropped her sales pitch immediately and took our card to show her coworkers the picture of the dog and cat. Donald Trump would have fired her.
I have seen more "invitations" to spend on my credit cards then I did last year, so I think there may be a push on, since regulations will kick in during 2010. The offers are coming more frequently.
I feel this way, too... the credit was excellent when we got the mortgage and the mortgage payments are always on time so the credit is good. I don't see that closing a credit card would do any damage in my own case at all.
What I have seen is above and beyond what they have been doing all along. It's an increase, not the usual flow of enticements.
The changes in the regulations are for cards in the USA. I think the card companies were a little shell shocked when Bush, of all people, approved the first changes that we have already experienced. Credit cards used to set payments so that paying the minimum payment meant you weren't paying down much of your balance. New regulations, in 2008, required they set payments so that you were actually paying some of the principle with each payment. Card companies then raised minimum payments, which pushed some people into financial distress, which was another catalyst for the current economic crises.
