Credit card companies really burn me up. Even as the credit-card reform bill passed the Senate last week, a big win for consumers with less-than-perfect credit, the credit card companies are now cooking up their next move: profiting from those with excellent credit.

As The New York Times reports, credit card companies may hit the perfect-payers with annual fees, no more cash-back and other perks, and – worst of all – charging interest rates immediately after a purchase versus keeping the grace period between billing cycles we now have.

Visa, MasterCard: your days of squeezing American consumers are over, and good riddance. Merchants already pay you a tiny slice of the billions of transactions happening with your cards every year – shouldn’t that be enough? It’s time to get less greedy. Easy credit is so 2008, and Americans know we need to tighten our belts – without sneaky disincentives from credit card companies, thank you very much.

If you pay off your card religiously every month, you clearly have the discipline to avoid using cards altogether. How would the credit card companies like that?

[image: Too Much Credit by Andres Rueda on flickr]
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Bully for you though it sounds like someone got a letter in the mail from their credit card company?...lol

I guess we can't blame them for trying to keep profits up, but if they were going to do anything, perhaps make credit available to the same 'mediocre' people as before and hike up there intro rates until they prove themselves over say a 2 year period. Keep them from earning rewards and charge them maintenance fees and leave the good ones alone.

People need credit these days, regardless of their credit score and the ones with lousy credit should pay more for it and the credit car companies should make their 'missing' money off of those people. Just my thoughts.

Hate to say it Bigdog, but we knew that was going to happen. It's a given that if you take away one source of income from a company, they will find it somewhere else, someway, somehow, that income will remain the same ooor increase by soaking the rich. (I think that is you). On the other hand, a guy like me has no credit cards. I have a debit card, and thats it. I used to have credit cards, but after accumulating some 50,000 in debt, got rid of them and paid those guys off. Credit cards, for my money, are a scam.

For those who use credit cards as a convenience and always pay their monthly off, the tricks you cite won’t work.  First, one of the big three will break and try to undercut the others.  Second, if they truly took away any advantage to paying cash or carrying a checkbook, I WOULD JUST RETURN TO THE OLD DAYS.  Third, the 3-4% that is charge to the merchant would be lost to all those transactions that I, and the likes of me, would now do without the card.  That % of the say $30,000-40,000 I charge each year is the ice cream of the sundae and not the cherry (annual fee, etc.) on top.  Fourth, it would be wonderful if they really tried to do it cartelwise, because besides enjoying watching them get a comeuppance, I believe that the congress would insure that the barriers to others entering the field would be lowered.

Visa, MasterCard: your days of squeezing American consumers are over, and good riddance. Merchants already pay you a tiny slice of the billions of transactions happening with your cards every year – shouldn’t that be enough?

As I understand it, Visa and MasterCard just provide the service of handling the transactions, and receives the tiny slice. It's the credit issuer, the bank or whoever that's taking the risk, that determines all the terms, limits, rates, and fees.

I pay off my balance every month and they hate me.  I just got a notice about penalty for drawing cash out of a ATM and reducing my cash back.

I think I am going to go to a debit card from my bank like Dave Ramsey suggests.  One it prevents you from buying anything on credit as the item is paid for immediately.  The other reason is less cards in my wallet.

Hopefully American ingenuity will create a start up ipo credit card company with perks for those of us who pay on time;  month after month, year after year.

I will cancel all my credit cards.  That's bullshit.  I ain't paying no annual fee.  Debit card is the way to go and if enough people cancel "the good cardholders that pay their bill"  it will get their attention.

There are traps with Debit cards too before everyone goes jumpin onboard with that idea. Some merchants charge you to use debit, AM/PM Gas stations for one, but there are others. You also have to watch for the way transaction are processed with debit cards. Credit transactions using a debit card can rack up fees because of how they are processed and the order in which the bank ptus them through. (Google Wells Fargo Lawsuit)

Not saying it is a bad idea and it would teach them a lesson, but it is not without other fees and ways for the very same banks you wish to send a message, to make money on fees anyway.

Amen to the good old days! Spshapiro, Muscle7, and Dave Ramsey, heck, all of you are right: sticking strictly to debit cards and cash might be the perfect comeback. (Although thanks to Corbinb2, I will favor cash over debit cards in that mix - thanks for the word of caution!)

It just gets my back up when I think about how excessive personal debt has gotten so many Americans in trouble - and, by extension, America as a whole. Just about everyone has a friend or relative who's gotten themselves snowed under with credit card debt at one point or another; those stories should be a lot less common than they (sadly) are. I don't plan on letting credit cards make a dime more on me, as a good-credit customer, with any sneaky fees or lending practices.  

Corbinb2 and Pauly B, you raise interesting points about how this industry could creatively restructure itself - now let's see if anyone picks up the ball and runs with it.

Don, What leads you to believe that these clowns will reform themselves?  You mean like the car companies reformed themselves?  Or maybe the tobacco companies who swore before all of us that there was no link? 
The car companies have shown us that a big business cartel can avoid confronting market forces until 'death'.  And until we elect representatives who take no money from them, we can expect no help from there. 
My only hope is that parents teach their children, and perhaps one day schools teach 'household economics' prior to teaching algebra.

You're absolutely right, Spshapiro: reform usually only comes after a lot of pushing-and-shoving, not usually voluntarily. Personally, I plan to wean myself of as much plastic-use as is feasible and do my part for starving the credit-card beast.

And I'd love to see the evils of credit cards exposed in high school or even in middle school curricula...after all, we should prepare kids for the onslaught of on-campus card pitches when they head to college. (College tuition itself has become a crushing debt-burden on our children - but that, my friend, is fodder for another post.)