At Odds with A Creditor? Odds Are Good - You Have Already Lost...

Think about your next dispute with your credit card company. A mistaken charge? Failure to credit a return? A penalty fee that they promised to waive? Or ratchet it up a little: Identity theft? A lost payment that triggered penalty interest and fees?

If you think you'll be protected from mistakes, think again.

Business Week has a cover story this week on how credit card disputes are settled through arbitration, specifically through NAF, an arbitration outfit that, by its own accounting, arbitrated 18,075 cases between a business entity and a California consumer.

The score? Business 18,045/Consumers 30.

Whether you know it or not, you may have already lost your next dispute with your credit card company--even if they made the mistake and you can prove it.

Read the story for all the details. Reporters Robert Berner and Brian Grow give us investigative reporting at its best. The story is factual, compelling and genuinely scary.

The Business Week story is for everyone who thinks that, by and large, fairness will win out, for everyone who thinks that a big-name company would never deliberately take advantage of its customers, and for everyone who thinks that arbitration sounds like a low-cost, fair way to clear up problems. MORE

Source: Elizabeth Warren
Warren Reports

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From: CreditCardReform.org
A project of Consumers Union

Has your credit card company used every trick in the book to maximize what you have to pay?

Consumers recently asked Congress and the credit card companies to end credit card abuses. Now you have a real opportunity to change the way these companies do business.

The Federal Reserve just proposed tough new rules that will stop credit card companies' abusive practices. But these reforms aren't a sure thing the banks are lobbying hard against them.

Take a moment now to tell the Fed to hang tough and enact these fair rules.

Right now, your card company can hike the rate you pay on your existing balance for any, or no, reason. Your card company may apply your entire payment to the low-interest balance you transferred from another card, while your higher interest debt piles up. Or it may not give you reasonable time between the billing date and the due date, so your payments are sometimes late.

These and other practices would be reined in by the banks' highest regulator. But the Fed needs to hear how these tricks hurt real people.

Even if you haven't experienced these specific problems, we need you to tell the Fed to stand up to the banks.

The Federal Reserve Board hears from Wall Street all the time. Make sure it also hears from you!

And when you are done, forward this info to everyone you know who uses credit cards. We all have a strong interest in fair rules that rein in the worst card company abuses. It will only take a minute, and it's a minute that will really matter.

Let the Fed know what you think about credit card reform. Your voice does make a difference!

The Federal Reserve Board proposes simple rules to level the playing field

Click here to learn more about this important proposal.