MilkYourMoney.com Comments On Proposed Credit Card Rules
Federal banking regulators (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the National Credit Union Administration) recently proposed rules that would curb abusive credit card practices that we have long been against. For a detailed summary of all of the proposed rules, click here. Today, August 4, 2008, was the last day in which the public could provide comments on the proposed regulations, which MYM has done.
For a copy of our letter sent to the Federal banking regulators, click here. Or click on the image to the left.
Overall, we feel that the proposed rules are long overdue and in general are legitimate in their intentions. While we generally feel the proposals do not go far enough, we applaud the Agencies for taking the first and necessary steps to curb these abusive practices related specifically to credit cards. MYM proposed amendments to the proposals in the following areas: Allocation of Payments, Applying Rate Increases to Existing Balances, and Firm Offers of Credit.
In addition to the suggested amendments, MYM also suggested that reform be addressed in the following areas that are not currently incorporated into the Fed’s proposal:
- The number of overlimit fees that may be applied in a single billing cycle should be fairly determined to properly put responsibility on the account holder to stay within their limit, but not overly punish them into unaffordable debt.
- Finance charges are often applied at the transaction date and not at the posting date when the money is actually financed. Finance charges should not be charged before the money is actually lent to the consumer.
- Fees charged to a consumers account for non-use of a card should be banned. Credit is something consumers earn and being charged for not using available credit is cruel and irresponsible.
- Penalty interest rates should be capped at a reasonable rate to both interested parties.
- A disclosure should be added to each monthly bill that clearly states the amount of time it will take and the cost to the consumer to completely pay off an account when only making the required minimum monthly payments. $
Related articles you might be interested in:
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader or email.
[...] Milk Your Money – Comments on Proposed Credit Card Rules [...]