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San Francisco animator Mark Fiore has cleverly captured our most cynical fear about the new credit card regulations that take effect in February — the card companies will just find new ways to abuse us.
“As reform accelerates so will the inventiveness of our fees, rates and gouging,” a fake industry spokesman says in the video. “Much like the ‘inactivity fee’ gives you the opportunity to be charged for staying out of debt, the ‘cardless fee’ will charge you for not having a credit card at all.” (Click here to watch the animation.)
Indeed, the Center for Responsible Lending contends that’s exactly what’s happening in an ominous new report called: Dodging Reform: As Some Credit Card Abuses Are Outlawed, New Ones Proliferate.
The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act approved last May “addressed the hidden and deceptive pricing strategies that had been the most costly to credit card users,” the report says.
“However, some issuers appear to be working to compensate for part of this lost revenue by instituting or accelerating new practices that increase hidden costs on consumers.”
Those new fees and rules”appear to be primarily designed to take advantage of inattention, lack of knowledge and documented behavioral biases exhibited by consumers” and “none are prevented by recent Federal legislation or Federal Reserve rules.”
The inactivity fee mentioned in the animation is alreaday being imposed on some accounts. The cardless fee is total fiction.
At least right now.
(8 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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