Well, I got a bit of an object lesson yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, I received an offer of a credit card through the mail, and as I still need to broaden & improve my credit history here, I thought it would be a good idea to take this up*, so I completed the application and sent it off, after reading through it fairly carefully.
Yesterday, I got my first statement for this through the mail (before I'd even received the card, which I thought was a bit keen in itself). For a card with a $250 credit limit, they were going to charge me $5.95 as a monthly fee, plus an initial $70 signing-up 'fee', so my brand-new credit card would have an actual initial credit limit of $175.
I went back and re-read the initial offer I'd been sent, to make sure there was no mention of monthly fees or of an initial signing fee, which - of course - there wasn't, and then phoned them to inform them that I hadn't agreed to this fee and that I did not wish to use this card & to close the account immediately.
The poor girl on the other end was obviously going through pre-written scripts, and first gave me the 'but this will help repair** your credit' line, then started telling me that I would still have to pay the fees as the account had been opened: but something I said*** must have triggered a different branch in the script, because she switched me to a guy who assured me the account would be closed and the fees reversed out (altho this may take up to 30 days).
Somehow I suspect if I'd sounded, ah, less educated, or female, the bullying to cough up the initial fee would have continued rather longer. Of course, now I'm going to have to both watch to see that they do reverse this, and to make sure that it doesn't appear on my credit history.
Parenthentically, until you've lived here it's hard to appreciate how important the credit score is, and how grotesquely powerful (and unsupervised) the credit ratings agencies are: there are endless horror stories of people getting identities stolen or just confused, and spending literally years and thousands of dollars in trying to get the agencies to recognise and amend their own errors (and of those errors repeatedly popping up every few years even after they are supposedly fixed). This may be just urban myth, but the extent of the stories makes me think that it's something that will - in a while - get addressed by the government in some way: at the very least, it is crying out for some legal remedy (a regulatory agency & appeals court would make the most sense, I think, but god knows what Congress will come up with).
Mind you, the whole financial services industry is absolutely rotten to the core: I'm not talking here about the financial whizkids that have invited the latest sturm-und-drang on all our heads - that is actually just the capitalist system going through it's usual spastic spasm, by and large, and those idiots will be with us always (see Jay Gould and many others). No, what I'm thinking of is the rotten stuff like:
* Credit card companies that will jump your interest rate from 18% to 39% if you are late in paying - not just if you're late in paying their bill, but if you're late in paying any bill, like the electricity bill. Oh, and then the interest rate doesn't go down again for 12 months, of course
* Banks that will always process all your cheques & withdrawals in a day, before considering any deposits, and if any of the withdrawals render you overdrawn, will bounce your payment and charge a $50 fee for this
* On top of that trick, when they have the opportunity, rather than reversing the largest withdrawal of the day, they will bounce the smallest payment first, continuing until the "overdraught" is eliminated - thus maximising the number of bounce fees they can charge. Of course, the bounce fees are also deducted, and can then cause more withdrawals/cheques to be bounced (if there are any), or the imposition of an extra $100 'unauthorised overdraught' charge.
I could go on - at some length, I might add - but why bother? you get the idea. The books are rigged, and unless you are scrupulously careful at all times, you are vulnerable: and they will rip you, every chance you can get. The ultimate Bastard society, I guess.
Well, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised: that's always been the reputation of the States, in the end: a wild west where the devil takes the hindmost.
sigh more tomorrow.
* As the credit ratings agencies consider the number of sources, and also the amount of uncommitted credit, in rating your score: so a couple of totally unused credit cards will actually boost the score substantially - just one way in which they prove their weakness to being gamed.
**ha!
*** I wish I could work out what exactly triggered this
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