While millions of credit card customers have been through the painful process of negotiating past-due or over-the-limit accounts, few have dealt with their credit company face-to-face. Usually, the conversation is with a customer-service representative in another city who cheerfully outlines the fees and penalties that the cardholder must pay, regardless of whether he or she can afford it.
Jackie Ramos, a former "customer advocate" from the collections department at Bank of America (BAC), posted a video on YouTube in which she offered an inside glimpse into what happens on the other end of the phone. While Ramos notes that her former employer encouraged her to "do the right thing for the customer," she says she soon came to realize that her job was actually to squeeze as much money as possible from the company's cardholders.
In her video, Ramos describes the strategies that Bank of America used to maximize its profitability. From charging a $15 "convenience fee" for payments over the phone to tacking on $39 late fees and $39 overlimit fees, Ramos says her bosses encouraged her to nickel-and-dime customers, drawing out every penny possible.
For some debtors, Bank of America offered "Fix Pay," a program that would effectively transform a credit card account into a loan; in the process, it would eliminate fees and close the account. According to Ramos, customers had to answer what she describes as a series of "irrelevant" questions and meet certain income requirements before they could qualify for the Fix Pay program. Ramos' infraction, which ultimately cost her her job, was that she encouraged some cardholders to lie about their finances in order to get into the program. Her logic was simple: If their accounts were manageable, fewer customers would default on their obligations.
While Bank of America declined The Huffington Post's request for a comment on the video, it did confirm Ramos's account of the firing with the blog.
The fact that Bank of America disagreed with Ramos's actions should hardly come as a surprise for anyone who has held a credit card over the past ten years or so. Late fees, convenience fees, interest rate increases, credit limit decreases, and other gimmicks have become common, effectively transforming credit cards into the economic equivalent of a game of Russian roulette.
Can government regulation save consumers and credit card issuers?
The C-CARD Act, which President Obama signed into law in April 2009, was designed to halt the strategies that credit card companies use to squeeze their consumers. Unfortunately, almost as soon as C-CARD made its way out of Congress, credit card companies began using their nine-month grace period to come up with fresh charges and innovative new ways to cheat consumers. Some, like Bank of America and Citibank are experimenting with annual fees, while others are playing with the idea of charging fees for inactive accounts. Meanwhile, lawmakers are expanding the fight to debit card companies, most of which "double dip" on ATM fees. In fact, as we draw closer to February 22, 2010 -- the date that the Credit CARD Act will go into effect -- it seems likely that debit card fees might be the next tool that banks will use to ensure a fresh stream of charges.
Yet the C-Card Act may be the salvation of the credit card industry. While the methods that Ramos describes have short-term benefits, they ultimately seem designed to push customers into insolvency. In one case, she describes a customer who owed $6,000 on a card. The cardholder, a recent widow facing single parenthood, complained to Ramos that the 29.99% interest rate that Bank of America was charging her, in addition to various fees, made it impossible for her to continue making payments. Unable to qualify for Fix Pay, she had little choice but to default on the debts. Given her situation, it seems unlikely that Bank of America can hope to recoup any of the money she owed.
Ultimately, that may be the lesson of Jackie Ramos: while her willingness to place her morals ahead of her career is inspiring, the truth of the matter may be that she was putting Bank of America's long-term health ahead of its own shortsighted policies.
This girl should be given a medal! BOA and many of the other banks that have received taxpayer dollars as part of the federal bailout program have done little if anything to help small business owners and those on Main Street. Yet wherever they can find a fee they most certainly do. Charging fees for work that a computer does! This isn't the 70's when banking was done primarily by hand so how do you as a bank justify charging such fees when you don't even manually look at accounts anymore. Not to mention being charged twice for taking money out of an ATM. With all the $ they make from these transactions ones would wonder why in the world they needed to be bailed out in the first place!
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