Quote:
Originally Posted by notlongnow
But instead the government that can't pay it's bills is creating a new agency, that needs to be funded, to help people out that have never learned how money works.
They think it comes in a little plastic card or other people earn it so the government can take it and give it to them.
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This is where you don't know what you're talking about.
Let me educate you about a situation in THE REAL WORLD. And I say this because it happened to ME.
I was unemployed. It was the worst bout of unemployment I'd ever had.
I managed to keep paying my bills. I cut back a LOT - and the fact that I wasn't commuting to work helped. I had unemployment but also cashed in a lot of savings to keep things going. Yes, I had a few credit cards.
I made my payments on EVERY ONE of those cards ON TIME. Sure, I wasn't paying as much as I would have liked, but it was ALWAYS above the minimum.
Lo and behold, someone claims I owe them money. It's a bogus claim but now I have to go out of my way to fight it. For a while, this shows up on my credit report (It was a while before I found out about these thieves).
How did I find out? Because the minimum payment on my credit card with the largest bill DOUBLED and my interest rate was hiked by over A THIRD. Nturally I called to ask them what happened and that's when I found out about the bogus bill.
It took me seemingly forever to get that damn thing off my record. A friend of mine who was laid off form the same firm that laid me off had something similar happen to him BECAUSE HE LOST HIS JOB - he made all his payments on time and they jacked HIM up becuase they were afraid that he would fall behind (which he never did).
It took longer still to get my credit card company to "put things right" and even then they said they only did it because I'd been such a good customer for over 10 years (never so much as a day late on a payment).
When a bank says "It doesn't matter if you do everything we ask you to do, we can change the rules of the game and move the goalposts any time we want" - THAT is WRONG.
When a bank deliberately re-sorts your transactions so that the deposit you made IN CASH IN THE MORNING doesn't take effect until AFTER the check you wrote LATER THAT DAY - THAT is WRONG (and that happened to my wife - they actually put a HOLD on a CASH deposit done IN PERSON at the branch office)
It is also why I deal with credit unions. When there was a mixup with my mortgage payment, it took all of TEN BLEEPING MINUTES with a REAL LIVE PERSON to get it cleared up. ...and guess where my wife moved her accounts after the incident I mentioned above (we were dating at the time).
Of course not everyone who is victimized by banks is as innocent. When you sign up for those "no interest" deals, it's there in the now-not-so-fine print (thanks to new laws) telling you that you still ahve to make payments and that the accrued interest can sock you if you miss one. Me? I've never had to pay the accrued interest.