Your Credit Card Rights

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Credit Card to Establishing Credit
One of the first steps in establishing a good credit history is obtaining a credit card. If you are in the process of building your credit history or are repairing your credit report, a credit card can really help. While you will hear most financial advisors warn of the dangers of credit cards, this may be the one time you are told to get one.

Your credit report is essential to being ab... Read credit cards article



Improve Bad Credit with Credit Cards
A habitual delay or missing payment for the money loaned would hurt credit rating badly. This usually happens with people who has committed the mistake in managing their finances.

Having bad credit history would mean keeping you from the ability to make loans for home or car mortgages, rent an apartment and even prevent an individual from getting hired. This is because many employers vi... Read credit cards article



Your Credit Card Rights
There are many rules that credit card issuers need to comply to in order to do business in the credit card industry. Most of these rules are meant to protect consumers from abuse and should be known by everyone in order to exercise the rights that originate from them.

Reasons for Denial

If a lender denies your request for a credit card, they must indicate you specifically why you were turned down or tell you how to get this information. When the denial is based on information in your credit report, you're entitled to a free copy of the report from the credit bureau that issued it.

Make sure to get the report and look for errors. If you find errors, dispute them. Then contact the lender to let them know about the mistakes. You would be surprised at home many denials where originated from wrongful information contained on credit reports. It won't hurt you to check your credit report regularly to prevent these problems either.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) protects your right to know what information is in your credit report and sets up procedures to make sure that credit reporting agencies or credit bureaus provide correct information about your financial situation.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) enforces guides to make sure you won't be discriminated against because of your gender, race, marital status, or age when you apply for credit. Any information regarding these topics should be excluded from data bases and not used during the approval process. If you get to know that any of the above was used to determine approval, you should inform on this immediately.

Billing and Wrongful Charges

The Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA) offers protection against billing errors. It also helps limit your liability for goods or services purchased if your card is stolen. The law also can help you reverse the charges of inferior products or services you bought with your credit card.

Debt Collection and Unfair Practices

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) outlines what tactics collection agents may and may not use to collect debt. Be sure to review these laws to make sure that your credit card company is following them. Harassing calls and threats of any nature are strictly forbidden and should also be informed immediately.

If you think your rights as a consumer have been violated, try to work it out with your creditor first. If that is impossible, file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), or contact the attorney general's office in your state. Doing so is not only your right but also a duty as a citizen, what happens to you is probably happening to many other consumers at the same time.

Sarah Dinkins is an Expert Loan Consultant at BadCreditFinancialExperts in the financial industry that helps people to repair their credit and get approved for home loans, unsecured personal loans, student loans, consolidation loans, car loans and other types of loans and financial products.

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Credit Cards Can Damage Wealth

Jim Spowart, the ex-chief of Halifax who also helped launch Standard Life Bank and the online mortgage bank Intelligent Finance, has recently announced that credit cards should carry warnings similar to those on cigarette labels to alert shoppers of the potentially high repayment costs. He is even reported as having written to the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, regarding "excessive" charges, and demanding that legislation is put into place. Jim Spowart believes that consumers deserve to receive better protection and that an official body like the Office of Fair Trading should be tasked with looking into the financial practices of the credit card companies.

The fact that many credit card charges are excessive will probably not come as much of a surprise to most credit card owners in the UK; however, with the nation's continually increasing problem of personal debt, there is a mounting need to implement changes that could help to educate and protect UK consumers from getting into further financial trouble.

The most recent reports show that credit card interest rates are now typically around the 16% APR mark, which makes them, on average, over 11% above the current Bank of England base rate of 4.75%. In the letter which he also intends to send to the shadow chancellor, George Osborne Spowart states that the warnings should be explicit in their wording, with statements such as, "This credit card is charging you a rate of interest 200% above the Bank of England base rate."

"[There is] no justification for such rates other than pure banking greed," Spowart told the Scotland on Sunday newspaper. He added, "What we need is legislation in the UK which would insist that lenders highlight the fact that they are charging 200% about the Bank of England's base rate. The cost of these excessive interest rates is certainly contributing to the customers' inability to pay bills."

This situation is especially unfortunate for younger consumers who generally have not had sufficient time to build up a particularly good credit rating, and who are therefore usually offered credit rates towards the upper end of the scale; these younger consumers are also the least informed to make intricate financial decisions. However, these decisions are not easy for older consumers either. Recent changes within the finance industry have made it increasingly difficult for all consumers to compare credit card rates.

Over the past year, the press has been awash with tales of the many different methods by which banks calculate interest rates - which means that some deals may not be as good as they originally seem. The recent legally enforced reduction of late payment charges is likely to lead to an increase of various other fees to compensate for losses from this highly lucrative source. To counteract the additional losses experienced by credit card companies due to people taking up the introductory 0% offers has, over the past 16 month, lead to an implementation of fees for transferring debts from one card to another, as well as a bewildering array of different interest rates assigned for new purchases, currency conversions, credit card cheques, and so on.

The introduction of reduced late fees, personal summary boxes, minimum payment boxes, and improved transparency by part of banks is a big improvement; but as the constant financial reports show, larger financial institutions are liable to claw back any reduction in profits from one area by increasing rates or introducing new fees in other areas - making it is unlikely that any real long term financial benefit will be gained by the average consumer.

Michael is a keen writer living in Edinburgh. Michael's Website: Belfast Airport Taxis




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Your Credit Card Rights
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