Credit Card Companies: Not Seeing the Light?

May 4, 2009 — -- It can't be fun to be a credit card company right now. Not when cardholder-in-chief Obama calls you on the carpet and says, "The days of anytime, any-reason rate hikes and late fee traps have to end." Not when the House of Representatives passes a bill called the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights, that would end billing practices consumers have complained about for years. Not when an even tougher bill makes it out of a Senate committee and heads for the full Senate.

And the funny thing is that the administration and Congress are piling on, even though the Federal Reserve already passed new rules in December that would end most of the practices everybody is all riled up about. The thing is, the Fed's new rules don't go into effect until July of next year and Americans are hurting now. Congress was trying to act more quickly than that, but the never-nimble body probably won't be able to pull it off. The House bill would take effect within a year of passage or at the same time as the Fed's new rules, whichever comes first. If the Senate version passes, then House and Senate will still have to hammer out major differences between the two.

Click Here to Ask Elisabeth Your Consumer Questions About This Topic or Any Other Consumer Issue

Anyway, regardless who gets to take the credit -- the Fed, the House, the Senate or the Administration — credit card reform is now inevitable. One way or another it's going to happen. So you would think card companies would see the fine print on the wall and just start making changes themselves to get it over with. If you think that, you'd be mostly wrong.

A Web site called BillShink.com tracks credit card terms and has been analyzing how many credit card companies are already in compliance with the coming rules. The Web site says many banks are complying with the less onerous rules. They're beginning to give consumers more notice before they increase their interest rate. And they're allowing customers to set a hard limit, rather than letting them go over their limit then charging them a penalty fee for doing so.

But the areas that make them a lot of money? BillShrink says they're mostly ignoring those for now, almost as if they want to run out the door with every last bit of cash before it slams shut. Some examples: