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If you want to keep up with what's going in the run up to the Credit CARD Act coming into effect next month, here's the latest from Walletpop. The card issuers are doing their best to get around the new legislation for example by renaming inactivity fees, which won't be allowed,as annual fees.
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/07/21/the-latest-in-sneaky-credit-card-fees/
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How can they get away with just changing the name of the fee?
Perhaps if enough people asked the same question of the new goverment group that's supposed to look out for the public when it comes to credit, they might not!
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True. I was reading another article there too about the merchants side and how that's changing.
One provision now lets merchants institute up to a $10 minimum for credit card transactions. It doesn't require them to; it just says that Visa and other processors can't make any rules prohibiting stores from implementing minimums. Debit card purchases, however, are exempt from minimum requirements; regulators did this because a number of government benefits are now distributed via debit cards, so requiring minimums for debit cards would hurt those (generally disadvantaged) consumers.
The law also addresses an issue that before had only been handled by a patchwork of state laws: namely, charging cash-paying customers less than those using their card. Prior to the law's implementation, consumers would probably only have noticed this difference at places such as gas stations in states that permitted the two-tiered pricing system. Some had laws that let cash customers get a "discount," although credit card users couldn't be slapped with a "surcharge."
While this may sound like splitting hairs, it was an important legal distinction. In the eyes of the law, offering an incentive for using cash is okay, but penalizing someone for using a card isn't. Now the financial reform bill bars processors from prohibiting merchants from offering a cash discount (surcharges are still a no-no). In other words, this decision now rests in the hands of merchants rather than card processors.
What goes around, comes around. I'll use my new card just enough to keep those fees at bay. How can they get away with just changing the name of the fee?
The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. - Mad Magazine.