Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Those Nasty Credit Card Users!

This article drives me a little batty. 

In most instances today, it would be silly to pay an annual fee for a credit card simply because most cards don't have them anymore. But in a Senate Banking Committee hearing examining credit card practices this week, one consumer advocate suggested those who pay their balances in full every month (about half of all cardholders) should pay a small annual fee to credit card companies.

Why? To pay their fair share.

To pay my fair share?  Three questions:
  1. If I'm agreeing with the terms of my credit card statement, how am I not already upholding my end of the bargain?  Most products are more expensive because they include the cost of the transaction fee that the credit card companies receive on every transaction I make.
  2. If someone else is NOT paying their full balance off, and as a consequence is paying exhorbitant interest fees, how should that be my problem?
  3. Why, oh why is it necessary for some third party to interfere in my agreemeent with the credit card company?
The credit card companies will hate this legislation.  What will happen is that they will lose the transaction fees of all "deadbeats".  The incentive that I have to use a credit card is the rewards programs and the free 30 day loan they give me every month.  But if all of that is offset by mandatory annual fees, I'll just switch to a debit card which does not have such fees.

So I doubt very much that this will happen.  But why is it necessary to even propose such meddling?  Why is it necessary for the goverment to have its finger on absolutely everything that I do?

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