The People's Revolution is Gonna Be a Podcast
I just became aware of Ann Minch, the YouTuber who got fed up with abuse from the credit card companies. Check this out:
And while I was writing this, she put this one up:
She’s got big plans that sound pretty good, so far. I know how difficult it is to find real, honest, and useful information on how to deal with the credit card companies and she has a unique opportunity to really help a lot of people out, and maybe even help the economy. I just hope that not everyone has to go on a YouTube campaign just to get the bank to be decent to them.
In the last few days, I gave up my battle with Citi over their raising my rate from around 9% to 29% because of the “economic climate”. Just today I received a letter from them explaining how the economy and the amount of risk my account poses (I have never been late in about ten years or more of being their customer).
So let’s see if I got this straight. Over time, Citi has loaned me a large sum of money. Suddenly they have decided that maybe it wasn’t such a great idea. Rather than working with me to continue paying it off, they think it is a good idea to do something that will make it harder for me to give them their money back. No wonder the banking industry is failing and bringing the rest of the economic world down with it. In what world does a business succeed doing that?
How about this – I will open a pizza shop and sell pizzas for about $7 and I will deliver damn near anywhere. When business gets down, this will be my solution: I will raise the price of my pizzas. Not just a buck or two and blame inflation or gas prices. I will raise them to $21 dollars. That will keep my customers, right? Of course not! They will hang up the phone and call the place that still sells pizzas for $8. Ah, if life worked like it does in the credit business. Credit card customers often can’t just go somewhere else, so the banks can do as they damn well please. There are many who can take their money elsewhere and they will in a big hurry when they hear about how their bank is behaving. Has it occured to Citi, Bank of America, Chase, etc that they are going to lose not just the “risky” customers, but good ones too?
And about those “risky” borrowers: Those who couldn’t get another lender to transfer the debt will be much more likely to default, thinking “I could make the $100 a month payment, but I can’t do the $300. And on top of that, with such a high rate I will never pay it down. Screw that! I just won’t pay at all and use that $100 to help pay down my other more reasonable card. Or eat. Whichever.” The credit card banks will now have even more customers default and they will miss out on on an unbelievable amount of money they could have collected on the high but not yet ridiculous interest on those accounts. Another fine example of how we allow the people who fail us to use the same flawed thinking to try to fix the problem they created. Are we learning yet?
