US Consumer Bureau Opens Online Credit Card Complaint DB 162
chiguy writes "The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau begins releasing detailed information on Americans' complaints about their credit cards online. From The Washington Post: 'The CFPB said it will only publish complaints after it has verified the consumer's relationship with the company. The new database will include not only the name of the company involved, but also the nature of the complaint and the consumer's Zip code. It will also report whether the firm responded in a timely manner, how the matter was resolved and any disputes. The CFPB said it has received more than 45,000 in the year since the bureau was launched.' Complaints about mortgages, student loans, and checking accounts will be added later. Financial institutions are complaining loudly, decrying the enforcement of one of the main tenets of the free market: transparency."
Seriously ?!?!?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Next time you vote, remember which party created this bureau and which keeps try to block it or defund it. Despite what a big pile of slashdot users regularly say, there are still differences between the major parties.
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You might want to read up.
Banamex / MasterCard (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Mexico for nearly 9 years now. Last November my Banamex bankcard got stolen. This was reported in less than an hour at a nearby "sucursal" of Banamex (in the same shopping mall). A few days later my wife and I discovered that about 27,000 MXN (about 2,000 USD) had been withdrawn in two shops in the time between the cards got stolen and reported.
So we went to the bank to report this. We talked to the bank manager (or supervisor), since we had talked to him earlier how to get money. Once your card is blocked you can only get money in the bank with identification, a copy of your contract (which they had on electronic file), and max. 3000 MXN (about 219 USD) for "security reasons" (right). Anyway, he couldn't care less, or that was our impression, but we ended up with a nice lady who really wanted to help us out, but was powerless against the unbelievable crappy way Banamex deals with customers in cases like this.
There are two ways to report incidents like this: the "fast" way: reporting it by phone. And the slow way (or in my current experience the "forget about it" way) by paper. We were allowed to use the bank's phone, so we called Banamex. And called. And were put on hold. And when finally someone who could speak English was found -- I don't speak Spanish very well -- I was put on hold, or got disconnected (again). After 4 (!!!) hours of this we had to leave the bank since they really wanted to close down.
We also went to one of the places they had shopped: Sam's Club. While we asked how it could happen that people could shop with my card the guy told us happily about how cards are cloned. I got the impression he was more into how cool this all was and what not instead of how "cool" is was for us, just before Christmas. Anyway, we learnt that 2 iPads had been bought at Sam's.
The next day we went to the bank building I had opened my account with. After 2 hours of more of the same, and worse; at one point I talked to someone in English who plainly stated she couldn't help me after it had taken nearly 20 minutes to get transferred to her, we decided to take the slower paper route. We filled in a form, I signed it, and hoped for the best. This was the 2nd of December
Right now? Still no money back. Even in Mexico the banks are insured for fraud (Banamex for 72 hrs after theft, if I understand correctly). We have contacted Banamex in every possible way, even via Facebook. I have contacted MasterCard, it's their shiny logo that's on my bankcard, but while they told they would escalate things with Banamex so far nothing has happened... Last resort seems to be CONDUSEF, but this being Mexico I don't have a good feeling about this (I do have some experience with PROFECO; an organizations that seems to "protect" consumer's rights).
What surprises me is the piss-poor "security" of bank cards. They are cloned in seconds, and it wouldn't surprise me if the data is transferred via the Internet to a different location; the trip from the mall were the card was stolen to Sam's Club, where the iPads were bought, takes probably 10+ minutes and what I recall from the time stamps they got there unbelievable fast.
A lot of companies get away with a lot. I don't understand why MasterCard can't put more pressure on Banamex; it's their logo on the card that got stolen. Is this logo just a meaningless shiny sticker? And I don't understand by Banamex behaves this piss poor; they are insured.
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I feel bad you've had such a bad experience with that bank. They sound like a bunch of assholes, honestly.
To add a different story to this, a friend of mine in the US had his debit card (bank card) cloned at a shady gas station. They managed to get $1,000 out of the ATM (the max they could) that night. He quickly saw it and reported it. The bank killed the card and he had his money back (they didn't even charge him the $50 you're technically liable for) within about 24 hours.
Just mentioning it so that peopl
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Thanks!
Back then I picked Banamex since their "sister" in the US is Citibank which made it the only bank (if I recall correctly) that could accept Google AdSense cheques. They didn't even ask a fee. Later they sold to me the more expensive Internet banking solution and now this, so they got their money anyway. The whole card cloning thing seems to be a major issue in Mexico especially with Banamex (at least that was the impression I got a few months ago after some Googling).
I wish I could just pick a bank i
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There are two reasons why I can't speak Spanish very well. First, I can get away with it. I am a freelance Perl programmer and work for customers outside of Mexico (mainly USA/Netherlands, but have also had in the past customers in Japan, Canada, UK, etc.) for the obvious reason that in Mexico wages are way lower (like 6 times) than in the USA/Netherlands. Add to that the 25% higher prices on luxury; for example the new Mac Book Pro with retina display entry price is 500 USD more than in the USA here in Mex
well damn (Score:2)
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Why do you have to complain to some board? Can't you just cancel the account, get a new card from a new company, and transfer the balance?
This is a good thing (Score:2)
Why? Because the poster wants to ensure that others do not repeat his experience. For example, when I am shopping, I always check reviews. I realize there may be some bad reviews, but if the majority of even half the reviews are bad, I will not go with the product. This site now helps people report their experience with card companies. Now, if you see overwhelming numbers reporting high APR's with Chase Freedom cards, you know that is a card to stay away from. Sure, you can simply cancel and walk away, but
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Closing an account dings your credit score by up to 60 points. Only close an account if a mortgage broker requests that you decrease your available credit or if you have a card which charges outrageous fees.
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I'm curious though, have you called and asked Chase if they'll give you a lower interest rate? I had a 19% APR on a card, got it lowered to a permanent 12% just by calling the bank and switching to their "low rate" option (no "perks" like reward points, but in the long run they mean much less anyway). I even did this while holding a balance on the card. This was with a Canadian bank though, so things may be different here.
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I had a 19% APR on a card, got it lowered to a permanent 12% just by calling the bank and switching to their "low rate" option (no "perks" like reward points, but in the long run they mean much less anyway).
This depends on how you're using the card. If you're carrying a balance on the card (particularly a large balance that you can't pay off), then lower interest makes sense. If you have no balance on the card, then having the rewards makes more sense (regardless of the interest rate). They can charge you a 99% APR, but you won't pay a dime in interest so long as you pay the balance in full prior to the end of the grace period each month (typically around 24 - 28 days after the transaction). In the case of som
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Yeah, I mentally inserted a "for me" at the end of your quote as I often do but I probably should have put it in there. Hopefully I won't have a balance for too much longer and then the cash back strategy will make sense (though even then you usually have an annual fee for a cash back card, so there's some balancing to do).
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That's not actually true anymore. The model has shifted such that people with fairly good credit (680+ FICO scores) have plenty of cash back cards available to them without an annual fee. I'm not looking for a new credit card right now, but I do still look at what they send. The first thing I look at is if there's an annual fee and those go immediately into the shredder (as they should in nearly every case for nearly every person).
That's guaranteed cash out of your wallet and into their's. They've already g
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Just pay it in full each month. Then you never pay the interest no matter what it is.
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This is why you maintain an FSA or an HSA. Those cover your deductibles and other out of pocket expenses. The money going into them comes out tax-free. Any medical expenses too big to pay off all at once, you call them and work out an installment plan. Most places will take $25 or $50 a month; often even less. If you make very little money and that's going to be a problem, most places will knock off a huge chunk of your bill (if not the whole thing) and work out ridiculously flexible terms. They just want t
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You should read up on how credit works or one day you might end up in trouble.
You might not be able to become a debt serf, oh noes!
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Automatically? No.
Probably? Yes.
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Whether you're the master over your credit or your credit's the master over you depends entirely on your responsibility, self-control, planning, credit education, and decision making. I've been on both sides of that game. Educating yourself is the first step to taking control and keeping it. Making smart decisions means you'll have access to lots of money (relative to what you're making) at very little cost.
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No, not even probably.
I own a home, I pay less a month for a home I can resell then I would for an apartment.
I will have t pay someone something, so why is it bad to pay into something I can sell?
Proper debt is fine.
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My high credit score has enabled me to keep float about $13,000 at 0% over the past 3 years (it's all being paid off as I'm comfortable doing) while giving me an average of 2% extra cash in hand from my rewards card's cash-back feature. Further, it has me a car loan that'll cost me a whopping $400 in interest over the life of the loan. I've been able to do what I want, when I want, and I'm (literally) being paid money for the privilege.
There are people who let themselves become a slave to creditors and ther
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We're taking a family vacation this fall courtesy of starpoints. The price of everything everyone buys covers the cost of cash back and points programs, so people that don't use them are effectively funding those of us who do.
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Re:well damn (Score:5, Informative)
hard inquiries affect your score by 1 to 5 points. FICO also groups inquires -- so if you shop for a mortgage during a period of a month or so, all of those will be grouped together (and will affect your score the same as 1 inquiry)
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/how-credit-inquiries-affect-credit-score.aspx [bankrate.com]
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How much a given hard inquiry will affect your score varies with the information in the account (things like how many hard inquiries are already on there). If someone already has 9 hard inquiries, they almost certainly aren't getting away with a 1 point hit.
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It's all a big guessing game anyway. FICO does not release the actual formula, and even though you can see the score from TransUnion/Experian/Equifax, the banks do not use the score from those agencies. They calculate it themselves, and they can use a different weighting in the formula.
Also, FICO is not the only scoring company. VantageScore, NextGen, BEACON, and EMPIRICA.. to name a few.. and your bank can use any of those for your account.
So even if you know your credit score... you don't really know your
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It's all a big guessing game anyway. FICO does not release the actual formula,
Not really. 35% of your score is payment history, 30% is amounts owed, 15% is your length of credit history, 10% new credit, 10% types of credit used. How all that plays in makes it fairly simple to get a rough (within about 20 points) calculation of someone's credit score based on their report. There's even a calculator right on MyFico.com (when you've bought a report and score) that allows you to look at all kinds of hypothetical situations (what if I miss a payment, what if I bought a house, what if I ..
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I've never understood the reasoning with why closing a 0 balance credit card should lower a credit score.
You would think the credit tracking companies would look at you closing a high interest, high limit, card as a good thing. It's like saying paying off a mortgage should lower your credit score.
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I've never understood the reasoning with why closing a 0 balance credit card should lower a credit score.
...It's like saying paying off a mortgage should lower your credit score.
Because [that part of it] is about how much unused credit you've got, how low your debt:credit ratio is. They're looking at how you use revolving credit, not how fast you pay off a debt like a mortgage.
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A level of responsibility/having-your-shit-together below a certain level is bad, because the chronically impecunious just don't have much blood to squeeze out. A level of responsibility above a certain level is also bad, because you are the credit-industry equivalent of those rational shoppers who come in, b
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If you think of your credit rating as a metric of your utility as a customer for credit services, rather than as a metric of how good you are at paying off debts, it sometimes makes a bit more sense.
But that's wrong. It only makes sense when you look at the credit score for what it is: a measure of how likely you are to keep to the terms of credit extended to you at a given time. Anything else is hogwash and won't make sense when you know what goes into the score. People with middle-of-the-road credit are the best customers for credit services. They pay higher fees, higher interest rates, and often make a late payment or two (which adds even more fees and higher interest rates). People with very high c
Re:well damn (Score:5, Informative)
I've never understood the reasoning with why closing a 0 balance credit card should lower a credit score.
It doesn't necessarily; at least not immediately. Closing a revolving credit account with a zero balance changes your debt:total credit ratio among your revolving accounts. If you have a $0 balance on a $10,000 limit card and a $750 balance on a $1,000 limit card, and you then close the account for the $10,000 limit card, your total revolving credit utilization has gone from 7% (which is actually better than 0% usage) to 75%. Using 75% of your revolving credit is a major red flag that says you're over-extended and may be getting into trouble. FICO scoring has no memory when it comes to revolving account balances. It doesn't give you credit for going from 80% utilization to 10% utilization in a month; it merely gives you one score based on the 80% and one score based on the 10%. Likewise, it does not penalize you for going from 10% to 80% (though you'll take a hit just for being at 80% usage).
The other part of that comes in later. A fairly sizable chunk of your credit score comes from the average age of your credit accounts. Closing a high-interest revolving credit account won't affect your score today in terms of AAoA, but in a few years when that old, closed account drops off your report? Well now your average just got smaller and your score may have just taken a hit. The more accounts you have, the less losing one will matter. At the very least, it will likely eventually cost you a few points years later. However, if it drastically affects your utilization, you could see a big hit today, and if you don't have many accounts, you could also see a big hit years later when the closed account disappears.
You would think the credit tracking companies would look at you closing a high interest, high limit, card as a good thing.
Your credit report is a snapshot of where you are at the moment someone checks the report. The terms of your revolving accounts don't factor into the equation in terms of a basic credit score. They may for one of the niche scores (there are dozens and virtually nothing is known about them since consumers don't have regular access to them), but your basic FICO score has no idea whether a given card has great terms or bad terms. In terms of things like credit cards, it's looking for your debt:credit ratio on that account, your debt:credit ratio across your revolving accounts, and the age of that account (to factor into AAoA). It's also looking for any delinquencies on the account (30 days late, etc) and how recent they are. That's about it.
It's like saying paying off a mortgage should lower your credit score.
Paying off your mortgage has the effect of reducing the variety of credit accounts you have open. It's treated as a type of installment loan. If you have others (like an auto loan, student loans, etc), the impact will be pretty small.
In the end, what you need to understand is that the FICO score isn't about how smart you are, but about how likely it is you'll keep to the terms of credit extended to you at any given time. If you hold a mortgage, car loan, and several (very old) revolving accounts which are all in use and in good standing, you'll have a stellar credit score. If you've got collections, late payments, judgements, etc, then you're showing an inability or unwillingness to pay debts and your score will suffer. The area in between is basically left to showing how able you are to juggle a lot of different credit accounts and how responsible you are about not over-extending yourself just so you can have that dream vacation/new boat/etc. It's also important to remember that things like debt:income ratios, where you live, etc are NOT in your credit score. Your credit score is strictly a snapshot based on your current credit report and does nothing but measure the chances of you sticking to the terms of credit extended to you at that moment.
If you want to know more, you should visit the MyFico.com forums. The people there make a hobby out of understanding how all this stuff works.
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This is why I still have my first credit card, from like 14 years ago. I charge something on it periodically so they don't cancel the account, and pay off the balance immediately. I'd prefer to have fewer cards but would rather have my credit score.
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Very smart practice. What I do to keep all my old accounts active is actually put a small recurring bill or two (Netflix, season passes, etc) on each one. I pay it off right away, but it keeps regular activity going through them.
Another thing you can do is to call them every so often and ask for better terms. Target number one should be any annual fees. No reason to stick free money in their pockets. Depending on the issuer, they'll usually be more willing to work with an old customer who isn't using the ca
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No it isn't. IN credit company parlance, he is a 'free loader'
It's better to pay it off and pay a little interest.
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The issuing bank, the processor, Visa/Mastercard, and the merchant service company all make money at the merchant end. If he's paying off the card during the grace period, he's doing nothing wrong. In fact, everyone involved has a reliable stream of income with zero hassles. Everything he's doing is automated and costs them nothing. Any card issuer will take 100 of him before they take 1 customer who's on the phone to customer service three times a month and is paying a bit of interest.
What's a card issuer'
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Out of mods, so I'll thank you for explaining something so well such that I could understand that what had been irrelevant to me is something I want to remember.
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You're mistaking the purpose of credit cards. They exist to make the issuing banks money. Why would seeing you close a high-interest card encourage me to offer you credit. You're not willing to be scammed by high interest rates, which means I won't be able to make money off of you.
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You're looking at it wrong.
This is an industry that calls people who pay there balance early, "freeloaders."
They do everythin in there power to keep interest high. Having somebody with abhigh credot score and high interested means means they ar elikely to pay, on time and with some interest.
Why do you think it takes an instance to get a crappy score and forever to improve it? because lower credit score is best for the credit card companies.
I used to write credit scoring algorithms , and deal with upper mana
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No credit is worse than no credit.
I decided to stop using personal credit for anything for almost ten years and use cash for everything, then had a HELL of a time trying to get a car loan because it has been so long since I had any credit lines open, so they all "scrolled"/"dropped" from my credit report. I basically had "never" had credit in lenders' eyes. I finally found a lender but it was a pain in the ass. The insulting part is I have friends who are irresponsible and have been through foreclosures an
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The insulting part is I have friends who are irresponsible and have been through foreclosures and vehicle repossessions who obtained financing through a particular lender - and they turned me down. I then mentioned friends by name who obtained financing through them after defaulting on loans through them, and their response? "But so-and-so has a credit history. You don't." I asked "So, the bottom line is that you're telling me is that no credit is worse than really bad credit?" His answer amounted to a reluctant yes.
Of course that's the case. Their business model is based on assessing and pricing risk. They have absolutely no data on you. Someone with a 550 credit score (bad) can find lenders who'll take them on for outrageous fees and interest. Why? Because they know that x% of borrowers with that score will default. They price the loan such that after that x% defaults, they're still making money based on the fees and interest paid by that x% plus the fees and interest still being paid by the 100-x% that didn't. When
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"..live way, way, beyond their means."
that is a different discussion.
" Hence the need for credit "
generally that's backwards, They use credit, and then end up in debt, and enter the spiral games.
Used to be you could cuts that short pretty easily, not anymore. That's more of GBs legacy, right there.
Here is the problem: Most people want to pay off what they owe, but they don't look for a way to make it easier until they have spent every penny that can possible scrape up.
Then it's too late for anything. Bankru
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But even ignoring all of that, going into debt your way is the result of using credit irresponsibly. You might have needed credit as a factor, but it wasn't
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Cars and credit cards are just fine. Cars you can buy at 0 - 1% interest if you maintain good credit. Credit cards? You never have to pay a dime of interest if you're careful and with a rewards card, they'll pay YOU to use the thing. It's literally getting free money handed to you.
Last year I bought a new computer through NewEgg with the Preferred card. They floated $1700 (I needed monitors and some extra drives) for a year and I didn't pay a dime of interest. Bad debt? Not a chance. I had the computer the
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You're buying a house with no credit? A nice car?
I've floated many thousands of dollars at 0% interest while getting an average of 2% cash back on all my purchases (basically a 2% raise) for several years. Meanwhile, I bought a nice car and I'll pay a total of about $400 interest over the life of the loan. I'm literally being paid for buying what I want, when I want, within the limits of what I can actually afford. They're paying me.
If slavery is having someone else float you free money and paying you to ta
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3%? What is this, 1995? Nobody's paying 3% anymore except -maybe- for AmEx. And that, friends, is why nobody wants to take AmEx.
Anyway, if some retailers actually are raising prices slightly (maybe 1, 1.5%), I'm still ahead of the game and able to float a lot of money for less than free. Also, I don't know where you live, but gas stations around the US were giving cash discounts back when gasoline prices shot way up. I don't recall any mass shutdowns for law violations.
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A) mnot 3%.
B) It's going to happen anyways. You're going to pay a light extra for accepting plastic. You know what? that also add in the cost of lights into the purchases..even when lighting the sore when you aren't there. And the price is increased to support employees you might not even see! the horror.
It's called the cost of doing business.
Oh, lets say you're riding you hippie ass down the road and get hit by a car.
You're in the hospital and rack up 50K worth of bills. This happened to a friend of mine.
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If I rent, in 30 years I will have nothing to show for
If I get a mortgage and purchase a house, in 30 years I will have a $100k house.
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Invest the money you save by renting and in most cases you'll come out ahead (who stays in 1 house for 30 years anymore?)
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Where do you live that you save money by renting? I want to live there.
I've lived all up and down the East coast and I can tell you first-hand that if you're saving anything remotely significant by renting, you're living in the ghetto and likely dealing with mice, roaches, and all sorts of other fun things. If renting were that much cheaper, no one would buy.
Also, it doesn't matter whether you stay in one house for 30 years. In 10, you'll have equity that you can put toward the new place. How much equity do
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What? Rent is HIGHER then my mortgage payment; which is fixed for 30 years, unlike rent.
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Having credit doesn't mean you are in debt.
There is a cost to living. YOu are going to pay for food and a place to live.
managing you credit means you can get those things cheaper.
Again, credit does not equal debt. And credit debt doesn't equal long term debt, and long term debt is bad..unless it's for something you would have ot pay for anyways, like a house.
Of course, long term credit card balance are almost always bad.
Everyone is in debt to someone for something. Unless you live on an island.
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If you discipline yourself to use a credit card correctly the interest rate should be of no matter to you. Never use it to make a purchase you can't cover with cash you have in the bank, and make it a rule to pay the balance in full each and every statement. Do this, and you will never have to pay a cent in interest ever.
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I've found out the hard way, that merely leads to $50 / $75 / $100 annual fees which are waived for debt serfs. They'll get $50 to $100 /yr out of you, one way or another.
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They make money off the fees they charge retailers, which are enough apparently to allow me to collect a couple of hundred in "reward" points every few months.
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If you don't have the self control to spend less than you make, or the forethought to check th
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SO what we have here is some who is too ignorant to get a good credit card.
I pay, nothing. And I track that with Mint.
re: using a credit card correctly? (Score:2)
Yeah.... unfortunately, that's NOT the correct way to use a credit card, in the lenders' viewpoint. And guess who makes the rules? (Hint: Not you.)
If you repeatedly pay off a credit card in full, you're just an expense on their balance sheet. (They have to keep lending you money for as long as 25-30 days at a time without making a penny of interest on it -- not to mention maintaining your account with them, printing up fresh cards for you every so often, etc. etc.)
Sure, it shows you're fiscally responsib
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Then I must be an exception then. No annual fees, never paid interest, and take the cash option whenever I redeem my reward points.
re: exception? (Score:2)
It's possible ... but I doubt that #1, your credit score is as high as they'd rank it if you did things the way I described, and #2, you can go on with that strategy indefinitely without eventually having the terms and conditions of your card changed on you.
The credit card issuers are NOT really vigilant about what's going on with all the cards out there.... Many years ago, I went through a Chapter 7 and one of the cards I was able to keep (and keep using) for many months after the fact was a Home Depot ca
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If that day ever comes then I'll simply use the cash in my accounts to make my purchases instead and they'll lose the fees they earn from the retailers. Admittedly though, I'll miss cashing in my reward points as well.
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I do it the way the parent describes, and my credit score could not get that much higher. Because I'm getting points or cash back on everything, I run -everything- I can through a credit card. Thus they make more in merchant charges off me than they do off a typical person who pays cash or check for somethings. That's where they get their profit off me, from the higher prices all merchants charge everyone for everything to cover the costs of credit card fees. (But merchants would charge those costs whet
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You don't actually understand how credit cards work. Every time you buy something from a store with a credit card, the credit card company gets something like $1 + 3% of what you purchased. That's right, if the store is making a 10% profit on your purchase, almost a third of it goes to VISA or Mastercard. Before 2008, the credit card companies were looking for debt slaves. They loved the people who carried near the maximum balances and made near the minimum payment. However, after the economy tanked th
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With a credit rating of 720 there is no excuse for me to have a 23.9% APR.
That low? I'm in the low 800s last time I checked (yes, I'm old) and all my CC are the legal max of 29.9%. I'm sure the only dependency is which state you live in.
Personally I think they're pissed off that I don't carry a higher balance... gotta make $100/yr off me somehow.
One funny thing is I used to have multiple cards just in case and also the worlds crudest budgeting system, but due to endless too-big-to-fail mergers I'm down to BoA and Citibank, both with multiple cards.
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You don't get to sit in judgement of anyone else who uses credit properly just because you don't have a clue what you're doing. If all your credit cards are at 30% interest, you don't know what you're doing. My gf's cards aren't near that high and her credit's terrible.
I suspect:
* 1. You're lying about your score to prove a point
* 2. You're lying about your interest rates to prove a point
* 3. You aren't telling us the whole story
* 4. You've gotten scores from somewhere other than MyFico.com (and thus, almos
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With a rating above 720, you can easily join any credit union with which you have eligibility (and most have back doors to get in) and get a credit card with no annual fee and a ~10% interest rate or lower. Word to the wise: save yourself a hard inquiry and sign up for every account you need when you sign up with the credit union. Most of them seem to want to hit your report every time you add something new.
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As long as you pay what's on that billing cycle on time, you don't get charged any interest. Treat it like your check card and you won't have any problems.
Using only 1/3rd of your credit limit and paying it off each cycle can do wonders to your credit score as well.
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It's existed for decades: the BBB. I successfully had my APR reduced from 19.99 to 9.99 with Chase. When I was out of work, they jacked it up before I could close the account at a lower rate. My complaint with the BBB motivated them to restore good faith with me. They are still pretty low on my list of potential lenders, but they're not on the bottom. The BBB won't be able to fix everything, but let's be frank: neither will any government agency.
"Tenets" not "Tenants" (Score:2)
Fantastic News (Score:2)
"In these difficult times, if you miss a payment, you just get a late fee, not a bump in your rate that will take years to reduce."
"Need help? We're easy to reach by phone or email."
"Our rates don't change. Sign up at one APR, stay at that APR."
Epic fail (Score:5, Interesting)
Financial institutions are complaining loudly, decrying ...
The real complaint is they paid billions to elect these guys, and look what happens. My suspicion is within days / weeks this will be defanged. Perhaps you'll only be able to look up complaints if you're already a customer of that bank, or it'll be made illegal to refer to these complaints in any way in advertising, or perhaps the names of the companies will be censored from public view, etc. I bet a simple hack to prevent citizens from using it would be the "only publish complaints after it has verified the consumer's relationship with the company" clause, whoops we have no budget this year for any verifications, what a surprise, I guess we can't publish anything this year... or ever. Another simple hack would be to prevent lookups solely by company name, must specify company name AND zip code AND mom's maiden name or something like that.
The new database will include not only the name of the company involved, but also the ...
consumers account number, PIN number, CVW number, SS number, and mothers maiden name. Wanna bet that it'll be, at most, a select query on the same server as the sensitive personal stuff is stored? And they'll be people uploading complaints named "Bobby tables" within hours of opening. This may be part of the scheme above... complain and everyone on the net can hear about it, but all of your personal data will be on a torrent site within hours, so you better not complain in public after all, serf.
consumer ... consumer ...
I hate being called a consumer. The article is about modern day debt-serfs anyway, not consumers. I want to be a citizen, you know, with like rights and stuff. Just like you know anyone using the N-word probably isn't worth listening to, anyone using the C-word probably isn't worth listening to. (Cloud is another good C-word to ignore)
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I hate being called a consumer. The article is about modern day debt-serfs anyway, not consumers. I want to be a citizen, you know, with like rights and stuff.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau deals with consumer financial services, as opposed to services aimed at, say, governments or corporations. Whether or not you're a citizen isn't their concern. Their mission is to protect the end-users of consumer credit from pervasive illegal bullshit. If the word "consumer" offends you, eh, too bad.
complain and everyone on the net can hear about it, but all of your personal data will be on a torrent site within hours, so you better not complain in public after all, serf.
Oh for the love of ... nevermind ...
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I hate being called a consumer. The article is about modern day debt-serfs anyway, not consumers.
I do too, but in this case I understand why:
1. The phrase "consumer finance" does in fact refer to the kinds of things the CFPB is supposed to be dealing with: bank accounts, credit cards, and personal loans.
2. From the point of view of the banking industry, loans, accounts, cards, etc are their products, which you are purchasing with fees and/or interest payments.
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The real complaint is they paid billions to elect these guys, and look what happens. My suspicion is within days / weeks this will be defanged.
If Republicans win this fall, expect the consumer bureau to be gutted then eliminated. It's not like they haven't already been trying to block or defund it.
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Good, kind-hearted government isn't releasing this information to benefit the consumer by embarrassing companies (beliefs of low-level government functionaries, AKA "useful idiots", aside).
When it comes to government (or business, for that matter) actions, I don't really care about motivations, I care about effects. It really makes no difference why the CFPB released the information - they did, and it helps me and most other Americans, so I'm going to applaud it.
Among other things, this makes it harder to sway me with emotional appeals: "BP cares about the environment", for instance, doesn't factor into my judgment that they had an atrocious record and did some really risky things on the Deep
This is why the big banks hate the CFPB (Score:3)
The last thing the larger financial companies want is clear documentation of exactly how they screw their customers. Just by sharing this kind of information, they start making the market compete better - now that customers are basically talking to each other, they know that Capital One is a bad deal, which will hurt Capital One in the marketplace.
Of course, I know that there are some who's head will explode when they encounter a government program that is quite cheap, effective, mostly non-coercive, and improves market functioning, but that's what this is.
Re:This is why the big banks hate the CFPB (Score:4, Insightful)
they know that Capital One is a bad deal
As a non-customer of cap one, for years (decades?) they sent me bi-weekly physical mail spam trying to get me to sign up. I worked at a commercial printing shop that occasionally printed and even mailed paper spam 20 years ago and I figure they're in the hole at least $500 cost of sales on me, so if I ever become a customer there's probably some data mining process that'll find some way to make $500 plus a hefty profit off me. Those TV commercials are not cheap either. I fail to imagine how anyone could think they'll be a good deal, other than maybe some momentary bait and switch sales tactic.
Any time you see a cost of sales of $X realize unless they're a charity or political campaign (I'm looking at you, Ron Paul) they expect to earn n * $X gross profit where n is probably pretty big.
God Forbid (Score:3)
The horror of an informed populace...
Funny, they can submit information to credit agencies that are applied to every adult in this country, but turn around and give the people an outlet to do the same thing in return and now they're sobbing into their cereal. Boo fucking hoo.
Interesting but... (Score:3)
There only seems to be around 100 complaints in their database. That couldn't possibly be right could it? Or have I been wrong about how terrible the banks can be.
Here's a quick query I threw together:
Complaints by Company
1 TD BANK
1 Zions First National Bank
1 USAA Savings
5 Barclays
6 Amex
7 Wells Fargo
8 Discover
9 GE Capital Retail
15 Bank of America
24 JPMorgan Chase
27 Citibank
33 Capital One
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33 Capital One
"Who's in your wallet" always struck me as a bit of an ominous warning.
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Yea, though this is clearly partial data. I'd like to see a similar list when it has all 45,000 complaints in it.
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That doesn't mean much without knowing the numbers of people carrying their cards. A useful number would be the number of complaints per 100,000 cardholders or something like that. If Discover has 8,000,000 cardholders but Barclays only has 500,000, then Barclays is ten times worse despite their better position on your list.
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Only 137 entries in the database at the moment, evidently. Probably only showing what's been reported via the site itself, at least at this point, via the complain submission section http://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/ [consumerfinance.gov]
Something interesting is that as part of the 'Submit a Complaint' there is a whistleblower function:
http://www.consumerfinance.gov/blog/the-cfpb-wants-you-to-blow-the-whistle-on-lawbreakers/ [consumerfinance.gov]
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She could always do what a good majority of businesses do - get a merchant account and accept credit cards directly rather than through Paypal. Her website will probably need to use
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Yep! I'm not a big fan of govt. regulation (your basic libertarian-minded type here), but PayPal managed to skirt a lot of control that everyone else in the banking industry seems to be held to, and I never quite understood how they were granted an exception.
For example, the eBay/PayPal merger certainly seems questionable, if nothing else? eBay purchases PayPal and immediately proceeds to make it the ONLY form of payment allowed for auctions on their system. I'm not even allowed to pay with CASH (supposedl
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PayPal is not the only payment option on EBay. However many sellers accept only PayPal because it is the easiest way to manage things.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/pay/methods.html [ebay.com]
And Paypal has never charged me as a buyer a transaction fee. As a seller, yes, and outrageously so, but not as a buyer.
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You neglect to mention that every seller is required to accept Paypal. It's the easiest way to manage things only because having one payment system is easier than multiple systems, and if you go with one system, that one system has to be Paypal.