I have written many articles over the years about Bank of America and their questionable consumer practices. In all fairness, when America’s bank does something good, shouldn’t I be fair and post that as well?

With banks catching all of this “outrage” from the politicians about abusing consumers before the credit card act goes into effect in February, Bank of America announced that they would freeze all interest rate hikes on credit cards prior to the new act going into effect. Now, is Bank of America really doing something good for its customers? Well, it is a brilliant public relations move for Bank of America. However, my assumption is that BOA has already made all of the changes that they intended to make months ago. Thus, they had nothing to lose but go ahead and make the friendly gesture.

Then there is Wells Fargo. They just announced that they would stick it to their customers with rate hikes of 3%. This is one of the greatest opportunities afforded the credit card companies by our politicians (you know the ones who are “outraged?”). They are giving credit card companies the excuse to raise rates and then change the interest rates to variable rate cards. Now the interest rate can go up every time the benchmark increases. So they raise the base rate of the credit card and then allow it to go higher as the benchmark interest rate increase. Guess where interest rates are going? You guessed it! The higher probabilities are that interest rates are going up. As a result, credit card companies are going to make more money.

Don’t you just love it when the politicians step in and “reform” an industry? I still think that the credit card industry is going to get the better end of this deal. Of course, that works out pretty nicely for the politicians – more political contributions!!

Tags: anti-consumer practices, Bank of America, Bob Brooks, Credit CARD act, interest rates, politicians, Wells Fargo