Archive for December 2009
Welcome to Credit Card Overcharges. Are you a victim of random and excessive fees imposed by your credit card companies. Has Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover and the banks that gave you your credit card, imposed ridiculous charges upon you.
Like all American, during these tough times, we start to pay more and more attention to our credit card statements because we have less money to waste. As we review our statements closer and closer we begin to notice charges and fees that we never realized existed.
The purpose of this website is to inform people of these overcharges. To provide a forum where we can collective provide information for each other to use to fight back. We hope that you will find your goals useful.
The Federal Reserve today issued sweeping new rules to protect Americans from sudden hikes in interest rates on credit cards.
The new rules, which take effect on Feb. 22, generally bar rate increases during the first year after an account is opened. After the first year, companies must provide customers with a 45-day notice before bumping up rates.
Some credit card companies have pushed through rate increases ahead of the new rules. So check your account to see if that happened to you.
The new rules also will ban – increasing the rate on existing credit card balances. For instance, if a customer is behind more than 60 days on a payment, the rate on the existing balance can be boosted.
Credit card companies also will be required to obtain a customer’s consent before charging fees on transactions that exceed their credit limits and will forbid companies from issuing credit cards to people under the age of 21 unless they or a parent or other co-signer have the ability to make the required payments.
Payments will be applied to highest interest-rate balances first, helping customers pay off their balances faster and more cheaply. And, due dates will be the same every month, eliminating confusing cut-off times for payments.
The Federal Reserve wrote the rules to carry out provisions of legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last year. Other provisions of that law are slated to go into effect later this year.
Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are the world’s biggest payment networks in the world. Today, the two entities may raise antitrust concerns if they “collude” with larger banks to block limits on debit- card interchange fees and scared off small banks into joining the opposition, according to a U.S. Senator.
Senator Richard Durbin stated, “If your companies were to coordinate such punitive actions in the same way that you appear to have coordinated your messaging tactics, serious concerns would be raised that you are engaging in an unlawful restraint of trade,” in a letter to the chief executive officers of San Francisco-based Visa and Purchase, New York-based MasterCard.
Senator Durbin is pushing legislation that empowers the Federal Reserve to impose limits on debit card interchange or “swipe” fees that merchants pay to accept the cards.
Curbing the fees, which average about 1 percent per transaction, could crimp revenue at Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. debit-card issuers.
The Senate voted 64 to 33 to approve the measure as part of the financial overhaul bill. The proposal becomes law if it survives a bipartisan panel assigned to merge the House and Senate versions of the legislation, and President Barack Obama signs it. Representative Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat nominated to participate in the talks, said she expects changes in Durbin’s proposal, without elaborating.
