My APR just got increased by 270 percent

It's cute the way you use terms like "risk-managed" to describe a company loaning money at one rate and then collecting at a rate 300% higher. Or were you using it to describe the way a company arbitrarily changed a due date in order to impose an egregious penalty AND up the rate? Or maybe was it in reference to a company "losing" a customer's payment for a few days, just until the due date passed, so it could charge a penalty and up the rate?

Risk-managed, my ass.

Fact is, had some of these companies operated with even a shred of dignity, this wouldn't be happening. For the last decade, they've been allowed to police themselves, and what the industry turned itself into is a bunch of loan sharks -- and in some cases, that might be an insult to loan sharks. So, instead of watching good people continue to get screwed over by these greedy shits, our Congress stepped in and adopted the list of laws I posted -- a list that no one in their right mind should have a problem with.

I think the greatest part of your ridiculous defense of CC companies here is you leaving out the chapter in which the parent companies of the credit card companies -- and in some instances, the CC companies themselves -- CAUSED the meltdown that led to all the damned defaults. But ignore the truth.

And no one has "taken" anything away from these companies. They can still offer unsecured credit to anyone they like. And they can charge them a high interest rate if they're a credit risk and they can penalize the shit out of em if they miss payments or are late. They just have to be up front about the rate, give proper notice if it changes and generally act like a respectable lending agency.

Oh, the horror.

 

Citi used to make my payment due on a different day in the first week of the month all the time. It finally caught up with me one month, and when I made an honest mistake the next month while moving and forgot to pay the bill, I got dinged with an increase. OK, it was my fault that I was late that month, but I had been ONE DAY late the previous month.

I also once had to call Citi and specifically request that they stop sending me information about new credit cards. It was bad enough to get four or five of those a week, worse still because all the special offers didn't apply because I was already an account holder.

 

While I was in college, MBNA routinely did the "late payment" switcheroo with both me and my roommate, failing to post payments two weeks after we sent them.

 

I had a Citgo gas card that a payment got lost in the mail. I made up the difference the next month and didn't think anything of it until I checked my quarterly credit report and saw they reported me to the credit bureau — for one late payment. I called the card company and canceled it on the spot.

In other news, I did some ciphering on my mortgage and figured the PMI will come off in August — about three years ahead of schedule — if I continue to make principal payments. That'll be an extra $100 I can use to plow into fucking my lender.

 

Take a look at One West Bank which was formerly IndyMac. One West is owned by George Soros, Michael Dell and others.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-onewest20-2010feb20,0,880625.story