Friday, January 26, 2007

Good Job; Let Me Beat You For It

This is, to put it nicely, insane.
But in a Senate Banking Committee hearing examining credit card practices this week, one consumer advocate suggested those who pay their balances in full every month (about half of all cardholders) should pay a small annual fee to credit card companies.

And why is that?
Those who carry balances on which they pay interest and fees are subsidizing cardholders with no revolving balance who may even be in rewards programs, said lawyer Michael Donavan of Philadelphia-based Donavan and Searles. He represents those who have unwittingly fallen into many of the sandtrap fees and penalties embedded in hard-to-understand credit card agreements.

Restoring small annual fees on cards used by "non-revolvers" would bolster revenues for card issuers, who then in turn might not make life so expensive for those with revolving balances.

Therefore, those of us who do what you're supposed to do and use our credit cards responsibly should be forced to pay because doing so might lower costs for those who don't.

Or, in other words, those of us who drive carefully and cautiously should have our premiums raised so that insurance for those who don't will cost less.

Does that make sense to anyone who isn't a Democrat?

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