Chase Bank in recent years offered credit card holders guaranteed rate loans for as little as 2.99%. These loans were made with standard credit card minimum monthly payments of 2% of the balance. In the last couple months Chase has started notifying cardmembers who took these loans that their minimum montly payment is going from 2% to 5% regardless of their credit standing. The change is also non-negotiable. This is the eqivilent of changing, for instance, a $500 minimum payment into a $1250 minimum payment. People cannot adjust to such huge unexpected changes in their budgets. I expect this is going to make many of their cardholders default on their credit cards. I don't know if the purpose is for them to get out of the credit card business or not but this is going to push a lot of their cardholders into default.
if your indebt more than you make ....then ur fucked. Who gives a rats ass about the consumer who is in over their head. Fucking let them fall.
Thats nothing...I got a notice the other day in the mail that they are adding Prime rate to my credit card on top of the interest rate. So this means that if interest rates go up people will really be getting screwed.
Can't you just opt out? I heard that they have to give you an option to opt out. Basically they close the card but your interest remains the same on the balance till it's paid in full as long as you pay the minimum every month.
I used that offer in college to pay my last semester of tuition. Except it's 0% payment option per month @ 2.99% APR. I've paid off 40% of the loan only dropping $45 a month in the past yr and half. Low interest is epic city. 5% payment per month is nothing.. you have 10k in debt, that's $250 dollars. *CRY
Exactly. But people like "pspr" want to scare everyone with a post that is more DRAMATIC than it's worth. You simply "opt" out. Close the account, and continue making your monthly payments under the same (previous) conditions as before. So much for the MASSIVE CREDIT CARD DEFAULT PROBLEM!!! What a douche.
It seems the manipulation of their credit card holders is starting to catch up to them. We're not talking about people with the means to absorb several hundreds of dollars in higher monthly payments. There are complaints all over and a New York law firm has started a class action suit over this and their new monthly account fee. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/credit_cards/chase_credit_cards.html http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/06/chase_payment.html http://www.gslawny.com/lawyer-attorney-1383679.html
Your point is well taken but you gotta remember that being over burdened with debt is not necessarily the consumer's fault. Indeed, if you were an idiot and bought a Hummer and a 500k house on a 40k a year budget then yes, you deserve to get screwed. However, there are things like inflation and medical costs, and my fucking furnace blew up, and burst pipes, and, I know I already mentioned it, inflation. Every dollar of credit that is created causes inflation and even if a consumer doesn't want to use debt to get by they frequently have no choice. It comes down to this...a debt based currency absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt, will collapse. The very nature of the beast guarantees it. Things are going to roll along until one catastrophic event occurs; that being, demand for US debt will dry up. That will be the day of reckoning.