ConsumerCents - Keep Your Change: 6/1/2009 IssueFinancial Knowledge is PowerHow Will the Credit CARD Act of 2009 Affect You?The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility & Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 has been signed into law. The bill was created to ban billing and rate increase practices considered largely unfair by many lawmakers and consumer advocate groups in addition to improving language in contracts and creating stiffer regulations for marketing and offering credit to college students.Most of the key elements address rate increases and how companies charge fees to their customers. There are other components involving disclosures, accountability, and offering credit to college students. For example, credit card companies are now prohibited from increasing rates on existing balances through "any time, any reason" or "universal default" clauses. Rate increases due to late payments are also more restricted and new contract terms must remain stable for the entire first year with the exception of promotional offers. New protections from fee traps require a 21 calendar day payment cycle, eliminatedue dates that fall on weekends, change each month or fall in the middle of the day, ban double-cycle billing, and requir a customer opt-in to process transactions over their credit limit before charging an over limit fee. As with any new law or regulation, representatives from different sectors of the credit industry have conflicting views about whether or not the new law will help or hurt consumers. As banks work to restructure their business practices to comply with the new regulations, you may see a number of changes to your credit accounts. Some of these may include interest rate increases (even for good paying customers), implementation of annual fees, reduction in credit limits, scaling back rewards programs and so forth. Banks are well within their rights to do any of these as long as they do so before the new law goes into effect. The best thing you can do to protect yourself now is to watch your statements closely and read all disclosures you receive carefully. Be sure to take action on anything you don't like immediately. If you rate goes up, call and ask to have it reduced. Likewise, if your limit goes down, call and ask to have it reinstated. If you are a customer with a good history with that company you may have some room to negotiate. Don't forget, there are still a lot of credit products on the market so it pays to shop around. If your current company won't work with you, pay off your balance as quickly as possible and stop using that card. Find another product that is better and use that instead. For more information on the new law, see the White House Fact Sheet or this Regulation Timeline by the Consumers Union. New Protections for RentersThe thousands of Americans affected by skyrocketing foreclosures isn't just limited to homeowners and their families. Often times renters find themselves soon to be homeless, through no fault of their own, because the property they are renting is in foreclosure. According to the Center for Housing Policy, nearly 20 percent of all foreclosures involve rental properties.Prior to a new law's passage in May, most states offered little to no protection to tenants renting properties that were in foreclosure. In many cases neither the bank nor the landlord had a legal obligation to inform the tenant of the foreclosure proceedings which resulted in most tenants finding out when served with an eviction notice after the house was taken over by the bank or sold at auction. This has now changed with the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act of 2009 (S.896) which was signed into law on May 20th, 2009. This act is part of the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009. The new law dictates that renters must be provided with a minimum of 90 days' notice before they are forced to vacate a property in cases where the buyer plans to use the home as a primary residence, the tenant's lease is month-to-month, or there is no existing lease. For tenants who have a signed lease agreement, they must be allowed to stay for at least the duration of the lease before evictions can proceed. States with laws that offer greater protections to renters than the federal law take precedence and the stronger protections apply. The new tenant protections also apply to Section 8 tenants and are effective immediately. The federal statute expires on Dec. 31, 2012. If you are currently renting a property that is in foreclosure, contact your county or state consumer protection agency for information and resources to protect your interests during foreclosure proceedings. Click Here to read the full text of S.896. Did You Know...The Google Tip Jar is an online forum where Google users share and receive tips on everything from home, work and finance to shopping, food and travel. Users also rate their favorite and most useful tips with an online voting system. Visit the Tip Jar now at www.google.com/tipjar.The Wishing WellClient Success StoryEvery so often we have a client share their personal debt elimination or financial achievement story with us. We love to hear from our clients as your stories are an invaluable motivator for us to continue our mission and to demonstrate the value of our services to our communities. We wish to share the following story with you:I am writing to express my gratitude to your agency for your debt relief program, which has substantially helped progressively liberate me from the nightmare of credit card debt that tormented me for a number of years. I had begun to despair of ever getting out of debt and am very happy indeed that I came to you. After soon liquidating another account, I can now envision being free of debt next year. I am most grateful to your agency for the happy sense of freedom this realization brings. Your representatives have been, and continue to be, very knowledgeable, courteous and helpful. I wish to thank the individuals who consistently went the extra mile to provide assistance. [Their] knowledge, care, courtesy and willingness to help are truly outstanding. Sincerely yours, R.T. |  |