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| News and information about consumer credit, how to mangage it, and laws / proposed legislation impacting credit. |
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New Approach to Medical Bills Does Little to Help Most Needy
January 30, 2006 – In his State of the Union Speech tomorrow night, President Bush will propose a new approach to dealing with soaring costs associated with health insurance. But the proposal he will make does little to make insurance more affordable at the consumer level, and does nothing to address the underlying causes for the steep rise in insurance prices. Those who don’t have insurance for affordability reasons, or who can’t get it because for some reason they have been declared uninsurable will find virtually no light at the end of the President’s tunnel.
Ameriquest Mortgage to Pay $325 Million Settlement in Predatory Lending Case
January 24, 2006 – Yesterday, Ameriquest Mortgage agree to pay $325 million in restitution to those who had borrowed money from the company. The agreement settles legal disputes with 49 states and the District of Columbia, and is the second largest in US history.
Economic Survival in a Natural Disaster
January 19, 2006 – There is a lot of talk in the media about natural disasters. In the past year the United States has faced hurricanes, flooding, tornados and fires. The first thing on the mind of anyone who goes through a disaster is physical survival. But what very few people consider is economic survival. Just because you lose all of your physical possessions doesn’t mean that you have to lose everything that you have worked for all of your life. But in order to survive economically, you need to do some pre-planning.
New Bankruptcy Law Not Having Intended Effect
January 17, 2006 – Three months ago today, the United States new bankruptcy law went into effect. The law was hailed by Congress and the banking industry as a way to crack down on “abuses” by dead-beats who ran up their bills with the intent of never paying them. But if the past three months are any indication, those so called dead-beats are few and far between.
Wondering Where Your Old Tax Refund Is? It May be Frozen by the IRS!
January 11, 2006 – If you are missing an old tax refund and wondering when it will show up, the answer may be “never”. That is because the IRS now uses software to identify possible cases of “refund fraud”. Unfortunately, the software appears to be error prone and tax payers are getting caught in the middle.
Time to rein in minimum-payment loans
December 13, 2005 - The Washington Post reported that federal financial regulators are on the verge of reining in what is considered ''affordability'' mortgages. These loans provide for a 1 percent or 2 percent mortgage payment, rather than the normal 8 to 10 percent.
Credit Card Minimum Payments to Double Over the Next Twelve Months
September 15, 2005 - If you are one of the 35 million Americans who only make minimum payments on your credit cards, you are going to be in for a rude surprise over the next year. The amount that you are going to be required to pay is going to double due to a little publicized federal lending rule that is about to go into effect. Unfortunately, most lenders don’t want you to know about the payment increases until after October 15th. That’s the date that new federal bankruptcy laws go into effect.
Boyajian Complaints Continue – What You Can Do If You Are Harassed by Them
September 2, 2005 – ACCESS continues to receive a number of complaints about Boyajian Law Offices and JBC. This firm is under investigation in at least 13 states, has lost its license to act as a collection agent in one other, and was recently turned down in its request for a collection license by the state of Connecticut. Consumers are obviously fed-up, but other than complaining to the FTC and their state attorney general, most have felt relatively helpless. Well, there may be something else that you can do.
All US States Now Eligible for Free Credit Reports
September 1, 2005 – As of today, residents of every state are eligible to receive their credit reports free of charge from the credit repositories (Experian, Equifax and Trans Union). These free credit reports were mandated by Congress with the passage of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) in late 2003. Under the law, eligibility to receive free reports was phased in nationally, from west to east.
Katrina's Disaster Victims Face Social Security Issues
August 31, 2005 – As the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) swings into high gear to provide disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Katrina, ACCESS has learned that the Social Security Administration has no procedures to help many of these same victims get back on their feet. The problem that many victims face is that they escaped with only the clothes on their backs; meaning that they have too little iformation for the Social Security Administration to reissue them Social Security Cards. This means that storm victims face a variety of problems that neither they, nor the Federal Government have ever even considered.
Homeowners Need to Update Insurance Prior to New Bankruptcy Laws Taking Effect
On October 17th a new bankruptcy law goes into effect across the United States. While Congress claimed that the purpose of the law was to crack down on deadbeats, it is apparent that little or no thought went into how the law treats victims of circumstances that are beyond their control. ACCESS has made note on a number of occasions that this group is largely made up of people who lose their jobs and those that lose their medical coverage and then get hit with catastrophic medical bills. But there is another category of people who may wind up getting hit just as hard unless they are truly prepared; homeowners who become victims of natural or manmade disasters.
MyPerfectCredit.com Not So Perfect
MyPerfectCredit.com (MFC) is a website that supposedly provides consumers with copies of their credit report for free. But what the company is actually doing to consumers is anything but ethical, and it certainly isn’t free.
Experian Agrees to Settlement with FTC for False Advertising
August 16, 2005 - FreeCreditReports.com, a subsidiary of Experian, has agreed to settle a law suit with the Federal Trade Commission over false and deceptive advertising claims. The FTC had accused Experian of using the offer of a free credit report to consumers as a lure to get them to subscribe to a paid credit monitoring service. The suit alleged that consumers were not told that they would be billed for credit monitoring unless they cancelled the service within 30 days.
Can Going to the Library Hurt Your Credit?
If you have overdue books at the local library, you may want to return them now. That’s because a number of cash strapped libraries have started using collection agencies to collect fines and fees that are owed to them for overdue books. And once your name is turned over, there is a pretty good chance that you will find your library fines showing up as unpaid bills on your credit report.
Credit Card Interest Rates Going Up? It Could Be Because Of Your Electric Bill.
August 10, 2005 – There are a lot of people carrying large credit card balances which they will be lucky to pay off in their lifetime. Some consumers are being hit with interest rates in excess of 30% even though they have never been late on their credit card payments. The reason for this is that many credit card companies now use a system called "universal default", which allows them to raise your interest rate for reasons other than being late in the payment of your credit card bill.
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