"Discover card offers you 1.99% rate on balanced transferred

[question everything]

the rate will be in effect until October."

Now, the no-nonsense woman continued: how much would you like to transfer? I could almost visualize her poised, with a pen in her hand.

No, thank you. We are not interested in acquiring more debt.

Now, that Discover card currently has a balance - due on the 25th of the months which I intend to pay in full. Plus, there are more charges since the date of the statement.

If I were taking the "offer", any future payment would go toward the lowest interest rate. Whatever is now on the card would be charged 12.24% interest until the promotion period ends. And with Discover, the finance charge period would start with going back two months.

It is not as if I have never used that method. Two years ago we paid for a new roof through a VISA card that offered no interest for six months. But I made sure that the balance on the card was zero before I took the advance. And then put the card in the drawer, so all the payments went to decrease the amount of the loan - and no finance charges.

The other day we saw a sobering movie: "Maxed out," about how the credit card companies go after the most vulnerable people in our society.

Yes, people should not run to purchase "stuff" because it is advertised on TV, or because it is on SALE or, more seriously, because cousin Emma works at T.J.Maxx and if we don't shop there she would lose her job (this is what an economy that is 75% service driven means).

But the credit cards go after freshmen in college (with tragic results reported in the movie), where they "calculate" tuition as the student's income. They do not go after young people who work presumable, because they have a better understanding of the value of money.

And they encourage people to pay only the minimum due and when the borrowers start to drown, they sick the collection agencies on them.

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. I started defaulting completely on some store cards

The interest rates went so high, I'm sure they're usurious. Anyway, once I had one judgement against me, I discovered that the judgement is BETTER than the card's agreement! Now I'm trying to make all my cards default so I can obtain interest free judgements with lower monthly payments. Basically, once one judgement is in place, I can't harm my credit much more anyway, so as Janis sang, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose :P

[shireen]

7. smart move ....

Credit cards debts are unsecured debt. What are they going to take away from you? The air you breathe?
A few years back, for a few cases involving extreme debt, Suze Orman would actually counsel people (on the tv show) to never tell collecting agencies that you would get a payment out soon. Don't make any commitments, and after 5 years, the collection agency loses the legal right to go after you. I don't know if that's still the case; i think the credit card companies figured out what she was telling her audience and may have tried to put a stop to it.

Credit Card companies are SCUM!

[whistle]

2. The credit card companies are still pushing this bullshit...good for you on turning it down

[notesdev]

3. Student loans, same scam

Notice how they get students to borrow more and more every year, while student performance and expected future incomes drop year after year. And the endowments for these universities grow and grow and grow off the backs of student debt.

Who really thinks that any university delivers $40,000 of value to each student in a single year?

[sui generis]

4. room with a view: consulting gig for the largest subprime card

Company rhymes with Kevorkian if Kevorkian was spelled P-R-O-V-I-D-I-A-N / W-A-S-H-I-N-G-T-O-N-M-U-T-U-A-L.

I'm not going to divulge any corporate secrets that aren't already bloomberg public knowledge by now but I can tell you for a 100% fact they are as profoundly predatory as your worst nightmares, squared. I worked for Cap One before that in the boardroom on other business (statute has run here) while they were talking about their lobbying efforts in each state and at the federal level and how they intended to be able to overcome "usurious" limits, and also to change notification processes, credit limit reductions up to three days before bill due (i.e., if you pay near your due date you would be overlimit before your original payment posted, and then late on your minimum balance), etc. Truly putrid sick.

Most astonishing of all is a number the industry callss "NCL", or net credit loss, and while I am not at liberty to voluntarily divulge the extent of their dishonesty in hard numbers I would happily do so on the stand and under oath, and I may even have some corroborating documentation sitting around, namely one where I asked why they were continuing to publish an old, wrong number. The number usually runs at about 7.5 (5% in good times) of principle, and is recoverable by hiking interest rates and fee recovery so that the "net" loss is usually a positive number against unrecognized revenue, including interest. The published number was supposed to be 1.5B (public info) going into Q4 2008 but was actually twice that in audit at 2008 Q1's adjustments <<<AFTER>>> participating in due diligence. Yep. That's right. They lied, they got away with it.

I can and will tell you this, the number they dangled to wall street was absolutely and absurdly, if not criminally misstated. I can say that because . . . . .there was a daily advisory and status senior executive board meeting that I attended, Monday through Friday, for six months. I'm not going to advise a run on the bank because I am not speaking about their banking operation of course, but if you can dump any WaMu or Providian credit obligation you have you should do so as soon as possible and stop giving them money. They really DON'T need a handout. I can also speak to one other fact within their banking operation which is they don't have a secure network. Yes, that is what you think it means, starting with telnet, and onward to other mind boggling tunneling vulnerabilities. It is possible they may have resolved or fixed these issues since I stopped working for them but just as easily they likely have not.

About those balance coverage plans? They NEVER pay out. Ever. The fine print is not just one set of fine print. It is updated in written, mailed, emailed, and "posted" notices, and if you read the fine print even further there is probably no obligation that they even do that or else you agree to arbitration before tort, etc., in such an amount that you could not possibly affordd to eat anyway if you chose that path. More disgusting people and well planned tactics.

Last bit of news about these guys: their global banking and card systems are SCREWED. It starts with having non-technical project management managing technical processes AND change control. Time after time I watched banking and credit systems bomb overnight, several times a night, every night for a week sometimes, and just barely up in time offshore to not bobble U.S. markets. Truly by the skin of their teeth. They are run by amateurs and beaurocrats, are not documented internally, have three levels of outsourcing and routinely lose millions of dollars a day in unpublished downtime (technically in collection "float"). That's not to say that there aren't sincere hard working people there who do care about the things are, but the top of the food chain, and management in virtually every single department is utterly and profoundly incompetent to work anywhere else.

Ask me how I know. Seriously. If there EVER was an insider with vision to the incompetence and corruption inside that organization, it would be me given the task I was charged with doing there.

I cannot tell you the number of times I was there for meetings or in a loaner office when I heard people acting sympathetic off mute, then putting customers on hold and just mocking them, (something like this: "oh I am so sorry about that" **MUTE**: AND IT WOULD HURT YOU SO BAD TO MAKE A PAYMENT, LIKE YOU'D HAVE TO SKIP A MEAL OR SOMETHING **UNMUTE** okay, sir, we're not showing that we are able to lower your interest rate any time in the foreseeable future on our "offers" screen ... what, it's at 42%, well, sir, if you read your cardmember agreement, well no sir, we're showing that you involuntarily did not voluntarily not leave before the three month lead period and then you said it was because you had surgery and could not work and that was for a pre-existing condition so we are not obligated to pay **MUTE** WHY DON'T YOU SELL ONE OF YOUR CHILDREN AS A MEDICAL EXPERIMENT **unmute** etc.

I thought I was listening to a MadTV sketch.


I feel strangely lighter, like I just took a HUGE long overdue crap. Long story short, the fuckers are evil bordering on illegal and I can prove it.

-sui out

[question everything]

5. I can only hope that after the subprime fiasco

and, one hopes, with a Congress more sympathetic to regular folks, that such practices would be reigned on.

From the movie, again, they had a well known professor who has been speaking on these topics. And she appeared before one group of bankers and was trying to tell them that they could cut their losses if they provide loans only to customers with good credit. And a top banana there boomed: dear professor, this is how we make our money, by going after the poor credit crowd.

Disgraceful.

And now you have the "paycheck lending" who go after seniors and other who get government payments since this is a reliable stream of payments.

[leftofthedial]

6. assuming you mean "Reined in"

I would not count on anything changing.

the corporations own this "election" like they have never owned one before.

[shireen]

8. WOW ....

that sounds truly insane. INSANE!

i have a card with them, and have been trying to pay off monthly balances in full.

last year, my cc number was stolen -- must have been that bad security you mentioned. fortunately, the porn site that had charged my account was far more helpful and ethical. they immediately issued refunds when i explained that i had not made those charges.

[NMDemDist2]

9. wow

just wow :wow:

I worked as a phone potato in a major CC company once and they'd roll out these balance transfer "products" that we HAD to mention and sell on EVERY call. Every Call, no matter what.

since I was an employee, I learned to read that fine print and the BT offers were all scams. total scams.

I quit. I knew they were evil then, and it's gotten worse since 1998 when I was doing it, for sure.

I have no CCs and plan on not getting any ever again.

fuck em.

[Warpy]

11. I cut mine into little bitty pieces and returned them

with letters that must've curled the hair in the noses of the flunkies who read them back in 1991 when they started charging all those junk fees and demanding silly monthly minimum payments. I could smell a scam starting and besides, I thought 19 3/4% interest should have been enough profit for anyone, junk fees be damned. Greed is offensive.

I've gotten along fine with an ATM card for online purchases. I've even managed to rent a car and stay in hotels with it.

The truth is that yes, people will look at you funny when you tell them you don't have a credit card, don't want them and what the hell, have they forgotten how to do real business? However you can do very well without them.

Nothing feels better than staying out of debt, even as you watch everybody else charging fancy vacations and silly consumer toys that you know you can't afford. You always know those bills are going to come due sometime, and it's probably going to be damned inconvenient when they do.

You, on the other hand, will be sleeping like a baby.

[melody]

10. Discover is especially tricky

When we paid off our balance, they cleverly left a slight balance on there which accrued interest. The first time, I thought it was an innocent mistake. By the fourth time, I threatened to sue them and they finally zeroed us out. I wouldn't trust them under ANY circumstances.