Very good news!!! People who walk away from their debts are paid for by higher prices charged to honest people who pay their debts.
In this country, people have responsibility for their actions, it is not the credit card company's fault if people use credit irresponsibly.
yeah....like this is going to make any of those prices and fees come down.
Yes, but what about the phrase "against one's better judgement"?
Some of the ads are very enticing; the salesmen hard-sell; and the fine print VERY fine.
By analogy consider the college senior pressuring (verbally) the bewildered freshman girl into sexual favors...
OK, I'm revealing my age there, nowadays it'd probably be an eighth grader and a sixth grader :-(
Full Disclosure: I received checks from one credit card agency to be used to pay off other debts; the payment rate on the checks was a very reasonable 1.9%.
The fine print caveats:
1) For checks made to self, or checks made to pay certain types of loans other than credit cards, the interest rate was > 13% (in this interest rate environment? They're NUTS!)
2) Any payments made to this credit card agency will be applied to the 1.9% loans first, enabling them to charge > 13% on any other debt you owe to them. In fact, given this policy, taking the checks and then continuing to charge on their card would progressively convert all your 1.9% loans to 13% loans as the payments would only go to the low-interest debt, leaving the high-interest debt untouched and accumulating.
3) Even a single late payment (no "grace period" IIRC) converts all unpaid balances to 13% OR MORE instantly.
Financial help like this I can do without.
But I have a PhD in the sciences and I am unfazed by numbers...how many "Joe Averages" read that kind of fine print and think through it before signing?
Cheers!