The Day Has Arrived for the CARD Act
Today, February 22, 2010 the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act is now effective. The goal of the law was to give consumers some measure of protection from the predatory lending practices of card issuing banks. As discussed in this blog before, it’s only marginally successful at best. I predicted that the banks would be scrambling to find other ways to milk you of your cash and they’ve been quite successful at it.
Over the past several months, a huge number of banks have jacked their interest rates to ridiculous levels and even the good payers have been hit. In fact, the good payers are the ones the banks are trying to get more money from.
One of the last-minute players in the money-grab game is Citibank. They announced on Friday that they would be charging cardholders (that’s you) a $60 annual fee if they don’t charge at least $2,400 worth of purchases a year. Citi added this fee in a test market back in November and apparently not enough people complained so they are assuming, I guess, that nobody minded and they are rolling it out to all their customers in April.
My guess is that their “Test market” consisted of hand picked accounts that already had more than the $2400 in outstanding balances Those cardholders wouldn’t get hit with the extra fee so why would they complain. Of course, low-use fees aren’t covered by the CARD act.
Don’t be surprised if the issuers continue to find new fees to take your money.
