Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT: politics

I agree we have to be responsible for our own actions and poor use of credit cards. But what frosts my butt about credit card companies is they have no mercy when someone does get into a pickle financially and goes way beyond their means. It is awful rare a CC company when notified about a situation where someone has gotten into a situation where they can't even afford to keep up with the interest that is accumulating, will agree to stop the interest onslaught and give the persona fighting chance to dig themselves out from the ever deepening hole (never understood that phrase).

Case in point: I have a 40 year old sister with bi-polar disorder and we (my family) do our best to keep her and credit cards away from one another. But with the constant stream of pre-approved CC applications coming in the mail and when my sister is in one of her "bad periods", a couple times she has managed to get a credit card issued to her. And this is with an outrageously bad credit rating to boot. Anyway, each time she gets her hands on one sooner or later she ends up buying with schizophrenic abandon till we eventually notice she is showing up frequently with new clothes and the like and get her to admit she has a card and lets us cut it up. Of course that is a couple thousand dolars later. Twice now I've appealed to CC companies to make a deal with them that I'll agree to pay down the her debt over the next year or so if they will just stop the interest accumulation.

Twice they brushed me off with, so sad, too bad. I point out she has a mental disorder, a poor credit rating which calls into question how the CC company could have approved her in the first place and the financial burden isn't helping her mental health any (or me for that matter). That and she may decide to declare bankrupcy cause she doesn't have a nickel to her name and no job, so not much to loose compared to them. Do they care. No, they couldn't give a tinkers damn.

I don't really like what seems like our societies ever increasing marginalization of the disadvantaged in the face of increasing wealth, but I REALLY HATE when given an opportunity to improve a situation that big business had a part in creating, a company would rather squish ya like the bug they obviously think you are. CC companies all too often have a bad rep. and seem to fall into this camp.

Ok, I best sign off and settle down before I go home to my wife and kids - Paul

Paul, I really understand your frustration in your individual case. The hard part is, for the person on the other end: For every person telling a true story, there are at least 100 lying about some made up family crisis.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but the people ejudicating your sister's case would need to be psychic. And a REALLY good one, too.

As for college credit cards, Citibank charges 15.74% after 6 months of zero interest ... with a 25 day free grace period each month. And yes, I was curious enough to look it up on their site .. this was their college student credit card.

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Please don't take this the wrong way, but the people ejudicating your sister's case would need to be psychic. And a REALLY good one, too.
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I realize this and don't take offence. In realizing this I was prepared to do my best demonstrate to them I wasn't just trying to pull a fast one (e.g. get letter from long-time phychiatrist stating the situation or whatever the comapny felt they needed to be confident I wasn't pulling a scam) but they weren't even interested. Next time I won't be so interested in bailing out what really amounted to the profit of the CC company. A default on any future CC account my sister may have would make no difference to her financial situation. She has no assets or cash.

Sadly such things just add to the growing sinicism of society, me included.

Credit cards have always been a true "You better know what you are doing" form of money exchange. The companies literally know what the default rate will be (we will call it X%), and take a view that it is less expensive to write off X% than to spend the necessary man-hours to collect the percentage of x% they could actually get (collect) by trying to work through the situation you (well, your sister) are in.

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Credit cards have always been a true "You better know what you are doing" form of money exchange. The companies literally know what the default rate will be (we will call it X%), and take a view that it is less expensive to write off X% than to spend the necessary man-hours to collect the percentage of x% they could actually get (collect) by trying to work through the situation you (well, your sister) are in.
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And at times they are completely without conscience about who they will give a card to. Even someone who has an abysmal credit rating and a proven track record of not using one responsibly. For this and the previous stated reasons, I can't feel anything but that they reap what they sow when they are maligned in the press and government occasionally steps in (at least in Canada) to moderate their practices upon the consumer.

Paul ... This gets back to what I tried to ask earlier. At what specific point should it be illegal for a bank to issue a credit card ?

Craig, needs not be illegal to issue cards to college students. How about debt ceilings or secured accounts until a good credit history is established? Who would lose by restrictions? Did you have a credit card when you were in college? In my day it was cash or check-we survived quite nicely and came out of college owing student loans at reasonable rates instead of 17% or higher for credit card accounts.

jorge ... Who would then set this ceiling ? What should the ceiling be ?

It would still require some form of regulation. As a disclaimer, I did not have a credit card until I was 26, and paid my own way through college.

Some ideas for legislation:

1. A do not solicate list (similar to the do not call list for telemarketers) based on one's social security #.
2. Require ALL credit card solicitations to have the potential card holder's SS# attached to the offer.
3. If I think of anything else, I will bore you some more ...

WHAT??? Put SSNs on credit card offers? That's just begging for an identity theft outbreak.