Here is a letter recently sent to the Better Business Bureau:
I am deeply concerned about some recent transformations in the credit card industry and their affects on regular American people and especially the less fortunate.
Even though I have paid above my requested due amounts consistently for years, I was surprised to find my interest rates being raised to an astronomical 30% on all of my credit cards listed below. I was informed that the reason for this was that I had charged over the limit 2-3 times in the past year. I found this to be ludicrous and began researching why this would be.
Upon inquiry with experts in the field I found the following things that were disgusting and the newest in a string of shady business practices:
In the last five years all major companies have stopped declining charge requests that are beyond the set means of an individual, instead marking them as over the limit' and charging them $35-39 as a fee.
Working closely with the credit reporting agencies they monitor the amount of liability in credit a person has acquired, waiting for this to approach the saturation point.
Once the person hits their defined saturation point, all creditors simultaneously increase the interest rate to the highest possible amount. This is done because the consumer can not accrue any further debt, and the only method left for increasing revenue is to increase interest rates.
The end result is a consumer who has been paying debt on time and in complete compliance with the terms of his debt is suddenly jolted from paying low 6% interest rates on high debt to a whopping 30%!
An honest consumer with a large debt of say $30,000 will go from making reasonable payments $150/mo interest payments to $750/mo in interest payments alone! That is $9000/year interest payments on a $30,000 loan.
I implore you to do something to stop this practice. I may be able to survive it, but I guarantee that it is destroying those Americans less fortunate than us.
Please, please, for the love of America do something to stop these companies before it gets any worse, and I guarantee it will.
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