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Credit card debt collection

bitsaboutmoney.com

281–290 of 568 posts

Re: Credit card debt collection

#281
post #151
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might be a very European view to the problem but: Why does the American government does even tolerate this credit card garbage business in the first place ? TIL: Credit cards are banned in Europe. /s

> TIL: Credit cards are banned in Europe. /s They are not banned. They are heavily regulated in many European countries. In several of them: - Cashback systems are simply banned. - Credit card are by default Debit Card. The credit option need to be opt-in. - Credit Card payments spread over several months are discouraged or simply banned by default. Credit cards are also much more rare. With an average of ~1 Credit C…

4 Credit cards per inhabitants ?

Does everyone have multiple bank accounts ?

Re: Credit card debt collection

#282

> you, reader, use credit cards in preference to debit cards as a payment instrument Reader from Europe here. I use debit cards for daily payments, that's just the most standard expected payment method in Europe (with mobile payments now replacing it. Is a mobile payment app more like a debit or like a credit card? I have no idea actually!). But credit cards for online payments on the internet because (despite some d…

My Finnish debit and credit cards are equally accepted everywhere. I normally pay with Apple Pay, also sometimes chip & pin, and of course online.

For all purposes, they are the same. In fact, they are bundled in the same physical card. The only difference is that one debits my account immediately (usually, unless the point of sale is not networked), and the other collects debt I usually pay off at the end of the next month.

I've never had any special rewards or cash back programs associated with my cards. There is some kind of travel insurance bundled with my Visa Credit cards, but that's kind of worthless for me as I usually have other insurance in place already.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FHA is 3% down. That's true in theory, though in practice any house you would actually want to live in is going may have a bunch of buyers competing on it and having an FHA loan (or VA, sadly, or USDA) ensures your bid is in last place. However, there are some conventional lenders that will do 3% if you get approved for PMI. And yeah, some creditors will do pay-for-delete in which case you may be fine. If you have…

> And yeah, some creditors will do pay-for-delete in which case you may be fine. Pay for delete is paying to have it removed from your credit file by the data provider (either the creditor or their debt collector). This is distinctly different. You pay the debt and provide confirmation the debt was paid. Whether it is still on your credit file is immaterial to close. It's paid? You close. Fannie Mae guidelines, for e…

> Whether it is still on your credit is immaterial to close.

Not if your score is tanked from having collections on it. Again, there are guidelines, but then there’s the real world. In the real world FHA loans means any desirable house you can’t buy and if you don’t have a decent score you’re not getting PMI.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#284
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor credit can cost you dearly. Higher rates on everything, and a .5% difference in a mortgate rate is massive. It's a way to burn your credit for years, at great personal cost, so not likely that people will take the out without desperation.

Higher rates on what exactly? Isn't it pretty much just mortgage rates? Plenty of people have no plan or desire to buy property within the next seven years.

Any sort of credit. Car loans, credit cards, overdrafts, phone contracts, personal loans, if you are a business owner they can affect your commercial loans. Rental agreements too.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#285
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the vast majority of people use credit cards without messing up their lives? I suspect most people don’t even need them but use them for cash back and consumer protection. For people who do need them, there’s nothing inherently wrong with buying something and spreading the cost or paying for it later in return for paying some interest. Most people who do that won’t get into any trouble. There are a hundred le…

> I suspect most people don’t even need them but use them for cash back and consumer protection. Then make a debit card system with cash back and customer protection. And kill a system that screw people with useless debts when there is no need for it. Btw > Because the vast majority of people use credit cards without messing up their lives? You never know where life bring you. I can certify you that "good", "honest",…

Setting aside the cash back, which is frankly superfluous and plausibly nets negative, the credit is the active ingredient of the consumer protection, specifically the property that when something unusual happens, you still have full access to all of your rightful funds and retain full leverage while bringing your dispute. If card-issuing bank for Some Reason fails to respond to you at all for a month, it's their problem that they're short that money because it's still in your accounts, must of the time minimizing the impact on your day-to-day finances to bricking the one credit line.

> This system just make that much easier.

What are we comparing it to? Inaccessibility of credit comes with its own issues, and predatory loans can get a lot worse.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#286
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[In the UK] despite the verbiage on most sites still saying "credit card", I've been using ordinary debit cards (from both Visa and MC) online for as long as I've shopped online, and never had a single issue related to them being debit. For many years I didn't even have a credit card Edit: it's possible that this is an issue of semantics. My cards have been debit cards in every sense of the term - they are labelled a…

I'm also based in the UK and, in my experience, debit cards actually tend to be slightly more widely accepted than credit cards, even online. But by and large, if a website accepts Visa or Mastercard, it doesn't tend to matter if it's a debit or credit card.

> But by and large, if a website accepts Visa or Mastercard, it doesn't tend to matter if it's a debit or credit card.

One large exclusion here is for gambling sites. Gambling using credit card sourced money was banned in 2020: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news/article/gambling-...

Re: Credit card debt collection

#287
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference I see is that in Europe, at least where I live, at the end of the month the bank will charge your bank account with the full amount of whatever is the balance of your credit card. If you have no money you will go into overdraft and that’s about it, you basically have a problem and the bank will keep nagging about that overdraft if you don’t have an agreement. The goal is to use the “credit” of the cred…

Swedish credit cards work with invoices and you are able to pay in partial payments, overdraft doesn't exist

Overdraft was a thing back when balance wasn’t checked online.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#288
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of the time I went to my favorite local restaurant for my annual complimentary dinner and received a bill the following month for $150 then received another bill several weeks later for a further $175.

The second bill is from the chef. You thought the chef worked for the restaurant? No, that was a separately contracted service provider.

And the first bill was because the waiter misclassified the meal as recreational rather than nutritional.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[In the UK] despite the verbiage on most sites still saying "credit card", I've been using ordinary debit cards (from both Visa and MC) online for as long as I've shopped online, and never had a single issue related to them being debit. For many years I didn't even have a credit card Edit: it's possible that this is an issue of semantics. My cards have been debit cards in every sense of the term - they are labelled a…

I'm in the UK and my debit card literally says "VISA debit" in the lower right corner (with "debit" in much smaller text). In any case, there are a couple of important semantic differences between a debit card vs a credit card that you pay off immediately: * you automatically get insurance/protection for certain purchases in a credit card (so I read, I've never used it) * It's much worse if someone steals your debit…

> ...because it's linked to your current account that you use for other stuff.

I solve this by having separate accounts for the debit cards that get manually populated with some money every now and again.

I also have a separate account to pay "Bills that will make me homeless if I don't pay them", so no matter what happens with my debit cards (and no matter how long it takes the bank-issued checks (some of my creditors still refuse to do electronic transfers, I have no idea why) to be cashed), I know those pending payments are accounted for and will not bounce.

Re: Credit card debt collection

#290
post #93
post #36

> I will bet you that, in practice, they simply avoid collecting against anyone who demonstrates ability and financial resources to enforce their rights. This is one for the history books of borked equilibriums. We devoted substantial efforts to pro-consumer legislation to address abuse of (mostly) poor people. We gated redress behind labor that is abundantly available in the professional managerial class and scarce…

A little over a decade ago I knew a young adult in the US that had a pretty rough life and I was trying to help her get back on her feet. When you’re homeless, it’s hard to get mail, and hard to keep your stuff; going from nothing to your standard documents is tricky. To get your birth certificate, you need to write a check to the state at some address where you’ll be able to receive mail in 2-4 weeks. Once you have…

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