>
> My ex was late paying his credit card one
> month and they raised the rates on ALL his
> cards to 30%. Thirty fucking percent!
I have one credit card with one of those fixed-rate balance transfer deals; the interest is 4.99% until I get the balance paid off, which is a lot better than the 24% I was paying on the other card from which I transferred the balance. I pay this thing monthly over the internet. Last month I checked the web site and it told me that my minimum payment for January was $0.
That seemed odd so I called the credit card company on the telephone. After a half-hour on hold I finally got through to a human customer representative. She told me, "Oh, whoopsie-doodle, the web site is wrong! Your minimum payment this month is $120." I asked her, "What if I had taken your the info from web site at face value and not paid my bill this month?" She said, "You don't want to do that! If you ever make any one payment late, your interest rate jumps up to 27%."
So with the squeeze on all the big banks these days, I suspect the web site error might not have been an error after all, and my advice to credit card holders is to keep an extra-sharp eye on the bills you get or don't get.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at ij.net