When Credit Card Issuers’ Come-Ons Are Misleading

“3 Credit Card Giants in Low-Interest-Rate Battle” [May 7] was full of useful consumer information. But as an attorney working in the consumer credit area, and as the author of “What Every Credit Card User Needs to Know” (Henry Holt/Owl Books, 1999), I believe that the interest rate charged is becoming much less important to the consumer seeking to hang onto the grocery money.

Card issuers advertise low rates but have a plethora of new, extraordinary fees and misleading practices to victimize those who respond to the once-valuable low-rate offers.

For example, many issuers now charge outrageous late fees of $29 or more when the actual cost to the company of a late payment is way under a dollar. Some demand that checks be delivered in the mail before 8 a.m. (before the day’s mail arrives) on the due date to avoid those late fees. And the scuttlebutt in the industry is that some issuers are not above holding checks that arrive on time so they can collect those hefty late fees.

Of course, we all are all too familiar with the barrage of sleazy junk mail offering “pre-approved” cards that aren’t and “low-cost” deals that prove to be rip-offs. I have a recent mailing from one company that touts “No annual fee” on the envelope and discloses in very tiny print inside the $12.95-a-month mandatory fee.

Additional legislation is needed to rein in the rampaging swindlers in the industry who profit extraordinarily by deceiving the American consumer.

HOWARD STRONG

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