credit card reform

Senate leaders are trying to “hotline” a bill that would expedite previously passed credit card reforms to prevent companies from hiking rates and fees before the law takes hold, according to sources on Capitol Hill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has asked members of the Banking Committee for their consent to move the bill directly [...]

First they delayed the reforms; now they’re trying to expedite them.
The House approved legislation today to have its previously passed credit card reforms take effect next month, rather than three months later.
The bill is designed to fix a problem the lawmakers themselves created.

Attempting to fix a problem that his panel helped create, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) will introduce legislation today to prevent credit card companies from hiking rates on existing balances. Although Congress passed sweeping credit card reforms earlier in the year — including a ban on retroactive rate hikes — the banking lobby [...]

Democrats on Capitol Hill were all cheers when they passed first-of-its-kind credit card reform earlier in the year — only to become publicly indignant when the card companies began hiking rates and fees in advance of those changes taking hold.
So after some Democrats initially delayed the implementation date until next year — a naked bow [...]

In April, we ran a piece about how some Democrats had bowed to the wishes of the banking industry and delayed their credit card reforms until next year, even as consumers have struggled to keep up amid the recession. Inevitably, the banks have used the delay by busily installing rate and fee hikes to beat [...]

Credit card holders hit with arbitrary interest rate hikes in recent months might be stuck with the extra burden, despite the high-profile congressional effort this year to protect consumers from such increases.

Even as some of Congress’ recently enacted credit card reforms go into effect today, a New York Times editorial reminds Washington that the banks are still cheating customers with overdraft fees charged to debit card users. These fees, which average $27 a pop, are slapped on consumers when purchases exceed account balances, regardless [...]

Congressional Democrats — the same Democrats who delayed implementation of their credit card reform bill for nine months — just didn’t anticipate that the country’s credit card issuers would race to exploit that postponement by hiking rates in the meantime.
Or did they?
In a letter today to the Federal Reserve and other key financial regulators, Senate [...]

Two separate votes. Two high-profile legislative reforms, wrapped together, are on their way to the White House for a signature.
The first installs sweeping consumer protections for credit card users, including a prohibition on rate hikes for existing balances (unless payments are more than 60 days late) and a minimum 45-day warning when rate hikes are [...]

As Congress moves to reform punitive fees and penalties levied on cardholders who miss payments or exceed their credit limits, credit card issuers are threatening to charge new fees for customers who don’t carry balances each month and pay their bills on time, The New York Times reports.
Banks are expected to look at reviving annual [...]