Got Perfect Credit? You Could Be Charged For It!
Loraine Mullen-Kress carries a Bank of America credit card and religiously pays off her balance.
"Flawless credit," she boasted.
Yet now, her good credit habits could cost her. Earlier this month Bank of America started notifying customers like Mullen-Kress that they will be charged a new annual fee of $29 to $99.
"There is a big segment of their population that they will have never made money on, which is people who pay their bills on time every month," said Ben Woolsey, Director of Consumer Research at CreditCards.com.
Bank of America said in a statement: "At this point we're testing the fee on a very small number of accounts and haven't made any final decisions." Citigroup is also trying out an annual fee with some card holders, and analysts expect more banks to follow their lead.
Yet now, her good credit habits could cost her. Earlier this month Bank of America started notifying customers like Mullen-Kress that they will be charged a new annual fee of $29 to $99.
"There is a big segment of their population that they will have never made money on, which is people who pay their bills on time every month," said Ben Woolsey, Director of Consumer Research at CreditCards.com.
Bank of America said in a statement: "At this point we're testing the fee on a very small number of accounts and haven't made any final decisions." Citigroup is also trying out an annual fee with some card holders, and analysts expect more banks to follow their lead.
The banks are starting to charge fees to reliable customers in response to a slew of new credit card industry regulations that will limit when banks can hike interest rates.
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Thanks Barack!
I used to have around 30K in credit, then they started pulling stuff like this. I opted out of it all and now I have about 3K of total CC credit.
ReplyDeleteYep. That happened to me too.
ReplyDeleteI have a card with a $50k limit, then all of a sudden I got a letter that said since I dont use that much credit they are reducing it to $20k.
Not that I care, but that is like saying "You are responsible and you don't use all of the credit extended to you... so we are taking it back. But should you start to be irresponsible and actually use all of this credit then we'll extended it to you."
They did that to me too.
ReplyDeleteIt actually makes your credit score go down, because having unused credit raises the number.