What to Watch: Maxed Out
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiOVNWoWTAU[/youtube]
There is a movie playing on TMC called “MAXED OUT”. It’s so hard to imagine how we got into this mess economically. (snark)
It’s about Consumer Lending and Credit Card companies profit making practices.
UPDATE: at 1hour and 16 minutes, Delaware’s own Tom Carper is shown completely ASS kissing the credit card companies and apologizes for being asked questions. Truly remarkable….
Credit card reform is an area where there should be bipartisan support.
This is not the only cosumer rip-off of the big banks are overdue for a lot of reform.
We can feel no sympathy for the ‘roaches’ who have long records of not paying bills but the average (and above average) citizen who is victim of a ‘gotcha game’ that has been conveniently automated and thus is not amenable to manual modification (or so they say).
The ideal target is the person with a high credit score. Such people will pay their bills and never have an account go into collection. They are the ones bombarded with offers at some pleasantly low ‘teaser’ rate.
Let a bill be mislaid and be sent in a few days late and a late fee will be assessed. Raise hell on the phone and you may get it rescinded. Repeat the goof some months later and the late fee will be assessed and the interest rate may escalate to 34% or more.
Then find that the account balance is divided into two categories with different interest rates. Payments are credited to the account with the ‘teaser’ rate and only after that has been paid in full with payments really make a difference in the monthly interest charges.
Are institutions such as Bank of America using their credit card operations to counterbalance bad mortgage loans?
It is not unreasonable for a bank to charge for services but what is the point of demarcation between reasonable and gouging.
Who can sell out to the big banks and sleep at night?
Thanks Tom Carper, Pete DuPont and Mike Castle!!!
Super job guys!!
Carper is also still campaigning with Mike Castle. They toured together downstate a few days ago. Lovely.
art,
The ideal target is the person with a high credit score. Such people will pay their bills and never have an account go into collection. They are the ones bombarded with offers at some pleasantly low ‘teaser’ rate.
I hate to burst your bubble. (not really actually) but you are sort of wrong. Credit card companies don’t make money off of high fico people. Typically they have no revolving debt, and the cards they use they pay off every month. Sure these people get tons of offers in the mail but that is because the triggers that are being set by the banks set the conditions to warrant someone getting an offer. The hope is that something will “stick” and the customer will apply and maybe use the card and carry a balance. But those customers rarely do fill out an application.
They want the people in the middle my friend. I should know by the way, this is my area. They want people in the 600’s with usage, with an occasional late fee over the past 2/3 years. There are so many attributes out there my man to determine and try to use to figure out how to get these people that are card users.
There is a reason Banks have hundreds of statisticians working in risk managament creating predictive scoring models and it is not to target high fico customers my friend.
You don’t make money off of a person that pays the card off every month. Only Mastercard and Visa do.
they want people that are roaches that have filed BK 7 or 13 my friend. They can’t file for BK 7 for another 7 years…
I’m looking for “It’s a profit deal!” from ‘The Jerk’ but this as as close as I can get.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2X3vVMdh-s“>Link