Partially responsible for declining retail sales: credit card interest rates

[AndyA]

I wonder if retailers have thought about the fact that their credit cards often charge excessive interest rates to customers? We all know that the rates banks are paying for credit are historically at their lowest point, yet credit card interest rates for customers are often 17.99% or higher.

Who in their right mind is going to charge anything with rates like that? If retail stores want to entice customers to come in and spend money, in addition to having sales and dropping prices, they might want to lower those credit card interest rates to stimulate business. If they're serious about surviving, they cannot continue to charge these exorbitant fees and expect to get by with it.

[cloudbase]

1. There you go again,

saying things that make sense.

[fasttense]

2. Short sighted greed.

Just like American corporations that sell their crap in the US, who outsource jobs to cheap foreign labor resulting in fewer people able to buy their crap.

Credit card corporations up their interest rates until their customers quit using them. Then they wonder why no one is using their overpriced credit cards.

[AndyA]

3. I got a notice from Sears/K-Mart in the mail this weekend, and that's what prompted my post.

In the mailing were updated policies from Citibank regarding my Sears Charge Card. Also included in the mailing was a nice note from Sears/K-Mart telling me how much they appreciated their customers, and that any comments to the updated policy should be made directly to Citibank.

I got the impression that Sears was pretty unhappy about it as well. I think they can see how raising rates at this point is not good for their business.

Congress needs to step in and forbid these excessive rates and fees from credit issuers. I know there's a new law going into effect in 2010, and I heard they're looking at putting it in place immediately, but it still doesn't go far enough to protect consumers.

Consumers, after all, are the ones government and corporations are looking to to eventually get us out of this mess, right?

[snappyturtle]

4. Maybe this idea is just too simple to work: How about a cc interest

rate reduction cap? If rates were lowered, (7,8 %)people could stay current. I would think that cc companies would welcome payments on time and hopefully for more than the minimum which surely beats defaults. Everyone wins; consumers lower their debt and cc companies make money.

What's happened to us I don't suppose as unusual and that's we used cc a lot during a time we were trying to help an uninsured brother with cancer treatment costs. In the end, sadly, it was of no avail but we used them. THEN we sold our business up north and moved back to my husband's hometown where he was a very successful home builder for thrity years prior. Of course we needed a place to live and bought a run down three acres with a little old hill country cottage on it. We got a thirty year fixed loan however, because we had taken on more debt the cc companies, BOA and WAMU took the opportunity to raise our cc interest rates to astronomical rates even though we paid on time and over the minimum.

I tried to negotiate a lower interest rate with both companies and to put it mildly, we were re-buffed and made to feel like dead beats. My head was spinning after those calls because it seemed upside down. The bank obviously didn't regard our debt as so over-whelming that they wouldn't loan us money but at the same time the cc companies, holders of unsecured credit, used the loan against us rather than as an indicator that we were credit worthy! Now, we have little extra each month to do with that we would use to boost the economy. Go figure.