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Credit Card Reform 2010 - Why Important.
Every payment has a grace period. When you sign your contract with any company for an arranged payment schedule, you have a rough idea when the payment is due. Typically, it is due on exactly the same day every month, and if you need to make a change, you notify the company and usually there is no problem. For some reason, though, this doesn't happen when a credit card company wants to make a change to your account. While it may be written in your contract that they can change your rate for failure to pay on time, especially if you have a variable rate, they do not have to tell you if they are changing anything or when. You could very easily send a payment to the credit company who receives it after the due date, by no fault of your own. At this time they could choose to act on that variable part of the contract, without warning you that your next payment will be higher because of the interest rate adjustment.
Credit companies also used to observe something called universal default. Universal default occurs when you miss a car payment and your
credit credit company raises your rates, even if they are not through the same bank. The basic understanding is that whatever credit behavior you have with one account, it will probably apply to all of your accounts, so your creditors can make changes according to the way you pay, or more importantly fail to pay, your other account balances.
Neither of these practices is fair because you are not given an opportunity to correct mistakes or even receive a warning that changes are coming. New credit card reform 2010 laws state that you must receive at least 45 days of warning before your credit card company can make any changes to your account for any reason. This is aimed, obviously, at reducing the extra fees and interest you would have paid.
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Credit Card Reform 2010 - Predatory Lending.
