Credit card interest rates are SOARING to all-time new highs according to this week’s report by CNN (found HERE). The average interest rates for plastic are now hovering around 15%. If your credit is poor however, you can pay dearly. In fact, credit challenged consumers with low scores can be expected to pay ridiculous rates, up [...]
It seems debt collectors and debt collection agencies are getting more tech savvy these days. In the past, collectors would use things like ’skip-tracing’, personal investigations, phone records, and utility bills to find you. Their job seems to be getting easier now with the advent of social media. Facebook, My Space, Linked In and Twitter are [...]
Credit card companies are losing billions due to the newly enacted Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act. In an effort to recoup some of these losses, companies are offering ‘business’ credit cards to individual consumers. Why? Because the new laws do not affect business credit cards. Credit card companies are ’skirting’ around the new [...]
Ok, for all you folks thinking you’re safe out there with credit cards and the deceptive practices of creditors, here’s one more example of how they put consumers deeper into debt. And they like to keep it that way for obvious reasons. The U.S. Justice Department and seven US states are suing Visa, Mastercard and American [...]
We’ve talked before about the threatening and abusive practices that some credit card debt collection agencies use. This story made abc headlines recently. If you have the stomach for it, the entire video and transcript can be viewed HERE. This time, it was a major creditor who hired this particular debt collection agency. [...]
The latest reports are in. Graduating students owe approximately $23,000 in student loan debt on average. This translates into over $830 billion dollars in student loan debt nationally. Compare that to the just over $825 billion in credit card debt and we have a winner! Not really. You see, any federally funded student loan debt cannot [...]
Last week was a bad week for the credit card giant Chase. Plagued with online services problems, their internet commerce site went down on Monday night September 13, 2010 and was out all day Tuesday the following day. Chase reported that their site was available again on Wednesday for customer access but online users were greeted [...]
Having large amounts of debt can cause many problems we all know. We blog about it here all the time. Debt affects credit score, your ability to get new loans, and even a new job. What we haven’t talked about yet is the strain it puts on your personal relationships. Sometimes the hidden debt isn’t even [...]
The credit reporting agencies have stated that US credit card debt balances are at an all-time low; the lowest in 8 years according to the release. Americans continue to pay down their debt. Perhaps the economy and employment rates have curtailed spending? Through the second quarter of this year, the average US credit card balance [...]
The FICO credit scores of US consumers are crashing and burning. You’ve probably already read that millions of people across America (43 million to be exact) are sinking below a FICO score of 600. The plummet is being fueled by rising credit card debt, foreclosures, late payments and otherwise huge amount of debt. In [...]
