Castle Law Office Blog | Missouri & Illinois Bankruptcy Legal Blog

Things Might Start to Get Fair in July of 2010

In the most sweeping changes to credit cards in decades, federal regulators on Thursday approved new rules to crack down on so-called unfair and deceptive practices by card issuers, such as raising interest rates on existing debt. – USA Today, 12/17/2008

Well, hallelujah.

What these new rules will do when they kick in is prevent credit card companies from jacking up the rates on existing balances whenever they want for no apparent reason. It will also prevent them from putting a monthly payment towards the part of the balance with the lower interest rate when a cardholder has multiple balances.

They are basically enacting most of the rules that were part of “The Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights,” which was a piece of legislation that was working its way through the Senate and which we wrote about earlier this year.

While this is good news, we think it is somewhat sad that it took a global credit crunch and financial disaster for these new rules to get put into place. Surely the folks in charge can recognize loan sharking when they see it, can’t they?  But apparently doing the right thing is simply not enough of an impetus where the banks are concerned.

You should also be aware that these rules will not kick in until July of 2010, so basically those of you with credit card debt are still at the whims the credit card companies until then.

If you have a credit card problem in St. Louis, cut them up and get to work on getting rid of your debt. If your debt seems insurmountable, contact the Castle Law Office for a free legal and financial consultation today.