After years of ripping consumers off in pretty devious ways by using fine print, trickery, deception, and plain old bad faith the credit companies now have pretty onerous restrictions on many aspects of their business model. The fees, hidden charges, and trickery they were using to keep higher interest rate amounts on your card and drag out your repayment as long as possible are now under much more scrutiny, and require a lot more notice from the credit card companies.
For examples of just a few of the changes check out this New York times article. Only after reading the new changes and restrictions, can one really grasp the nature of the lube less butt love we have been getting from the credit card companies.
Of course as is the usual norm, Canada’s brainless politicians will adopt the American laws after they have done all the hard work and thinking. We in Canada, for anyone not Canadian, don’t do any of our own thinking. Not sure if we can’t afford it, or just too peaceful to care which, incidentally, is our response to everything. We actually just copy whatever the US does a few years later, which makes one wonder why we even have paid politicians. I mean I’m pretty sure I can copy paste American laws and ideas in my spare time and save us all the money and embarrassment of Prime Ministers who accept money in envelopes under the table in restaurants. The only reason we are not in the same credit crisis the US is in, is that our banks/govn were too slow to copy this time around.
Speak of the devil, here he comes now and only a day after the US annoucement this time. Once in my lifetime I wish to see Canada have a good idea and announce and implement it before the US does. I think I”ll die an unsatisfied bitter old man.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/05/21/credit-cards-flaherty021.html
Other things we have copied include (for those who think I talk out of my ass):
1) cell phone number portability – finally made it’s way here 2-3 years later than the US, finally giving consumers a choice to move to another carrier if they were unhappy
2) do not call lists – finally made their way here a year or more later
3) forced switch to digital television – hasn’t happend yet, but it is in the works
4) NAFTA -US and Mexico were signing, so we jumped on board but it was a US idea
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/your-money/20money.html?em
