President Obama’s weekly address to the nation focused on credit card refom, a topic he’s been attacking with a vengeance lately.  After meeting with credit card executives on April 23rd, our website had a tremendous decline in consumer complaints.  Apparently, credit card executives listened.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough. 

In today’s address, the President calls on Congress to, “to take final action to pass a credit card reform bill that protects American consumers so that I can sign it into law by Memorial Day. Continue Reading »

As we reported earlier, Bank of America is increasing a number of credit card fees, including balance transfer fees, to 4%.  While news of the impending balance transfer fee increase was made public a few weeks ago, I received a letter from Bank of America outlining other, substantial fee increases relating to a wide range of transactions.

First on the list are ATM cash advance fees, check cash advance fees (yet another reason to put balance transfer checks in the shredder), direct deposit cash advances, and wire transfer purchases. Continue Reading »

During the better part of last month, we received more complaints about credit card companies than we did during all of last year.  This was no minor feat, as everybody has a reason to complain about their credit card.  Oddly, however, credit card complaints have come to a standstill since President Obama met with credit card executives on April 23rd.

Whether by force or not, it seems that Obama was able to strongly influence the policies at all the major credit card companies.  Days before the meeting, consumers were complaining about random rate increases, massive fees, and customer service reps who only knew one phrase:  Sorry, can’t help you. Continue Reading »

A visitor recently questioned the effectiveness of using balance transfer credit cards to get out of debt.  His skepticism was well reasoned, as it is hard to fathom just how expensive credit card debt can be.  In my opinion, the visitor was more in denial about how much interest the average person with $5,000 in debt pays over the course of a year then he was about balance transfers.  Similarly, its equally difficult to fathom how long it can take to get out of debt with an interest rate in the mid teens, let alone a default rate in the twenties. Continue Reading »

Unfortunately, a number of my dire predictions have been coming true recently.  Eight months ago, I wrote that no fee balance transfers would become a thing of the past.  Today, getting a 0% APR for 1 year on a credit card that charges no fees on balance transfers is a distant memory.

About the same time, I warned that balance transfer fees would rise.  At that time, most companies were charging a 3% fee with a $75 maximum.  A few weeks later, companies began lifting the $75 maximum, raising the cost on balance transfers in excess of $2500 dramatically.  Continue Reading »