This is a great description of a lot of the dirty tricks credit card companies pull. Remember that a credit-free lifestyle is possible.

The most important part of this story is that there was notice provided to customers of the resubscriptions, but because it was buried in the license agreement, the courts determined that the subscriptions were charged without consent.

The investigators found that "information about automatic renewal charges was not clearly disclosed, but was instead hidden at the bottom of long web pages or in the fine print of license agreements".

The companies have now agreed to provide electronic notification both before and after the renewal of subscriptions. Customers will also be allowed to apply for refunds for up to 60 days after being charged.

Just because it's in a contract, doesn't mean someone understands it. Companies have enormous leverage against regular people and it's nice to see that courts are standing up for the little guy.

That bill that everyone's been talking about a while just passed with most of the good protections still in tact (go figure). Essentially, the bill is a shinging example of regulation at its best and industry at its worst as it mandates that credit companies stop doing things that are dishonest and one-sided.

Wow. Who knew that without laws to prevent it, companies would stoop to one-sided and dishonest policies for the sake of money… hmmm.

Some of the major points:

Plain-English contracts

Can't raise interest rates on existing balances unless the card holder is 60 days behind, then the rate has to be restored if payments are on time for six months.

45 days advance notice required for rate increases.

Credit card companies can't charge a late fee if they themselves are late processing a payment.

Statements have to get mailed 21 days before the payment is due.

Harder to give credit cards to people under 21.

Rates can be increased within the first year

Promotional rates have to last at least 6 month

A while back, I was educated on the various ways that Gamestop is one of the worst businesses in the world (either as a customer or an employee). Now here's more evidence of how rotten they are in the form of how they screw their own employees out of their paychecks using a fee-loaded "pay card" system.

When forced by California law to make electric cars available, GM made advertisements for their electric car that bring to mind such warm and fuzzy feelings as death, dismemberment, and horror.

You don't have to have a PhD psychology to figure out that they were trying to scare consumers away from buying electric cars.

Don't take my word for it, see for yourself:

It's the deliberate attempts by US auto companies to halt any type of innovation that could possibly lead to lower profits that made me say that the bailouts were completely bogus. We should have let them die or at least forced them to do good business through stiff regulation.

Ha!

Regulators have handed down new rules that will curb some of the more abusive practices of the credit card industry.

They also restrict such lender practices as allocating all payments to balances with lower interest rates when a borrower has balances with different rates

Did you know they did that? Think store cards with those various interest rate deals that you have to pay off by a certain time or get slapped with fees. What if the store doesn't apply any of your payment to that PART of your debt? What happens? Yeah… it's not good.

The new rules prohibit:

_Placing unfair time constraints on payments. A payment could not be deemed late unless the borrower is given a reasonable period of time, such as 21 days, to pay.

_Placing too-high fees for exceeding the credit limit solely because of a hold placed on the account.

_Unfairly computing balances in a computing tactic known as double-cycle billing.

_Unfairly adding security deposits and fees for issuing credit or making it available.

_Making deceptive offers of credit.

Good start. Too bad we have to constantly be watching companies to prevent them from ripping us off, but that's capitalism…

It's that time of year when companies are pushing gift cards again. Safeway is even selling gift cards for other companies (how convenient). Here are the top 5 reasons to reconsider before forking out cash for a tiny plastic card:

Disclaimer

I know that there are SOME cases where buying a gift card is a good thing. This is usually only when someone in your family wants something really expensive that no one can afford and everyone knows it so they pitch in with gift cards. I've never seen that go badly so long as it was under those circumstances.

The other thing I know people will beat me up for in comments if I don't say something first is how hard it is to get someone a good gift sometimes. Here's two tips:

1) Get them something AND a gift card. Make a damned effort you lazy bum.
2) Get you and your family on a gift registry. I made one of my own for my family on my website years back and it's been great! I always know what kinds of gifts my family would like no matter how scattered our time together or phone conversations may be. Even if I don't buy them exactly what they have listed on the site, I at least have an idea of what kinds of things they would like.

So with that said, have a happy and gift card responsible season!

Duh.

The 18-month survey found that most banks automatically enroll consumers in overdraft programs — some don't allow them to opt out — and then cover overdrawn transactions for a per-item fee of up to $38.

The part many people don't know about is that banks purposefully post all charges to accounts in reverse size-order so that you get over-drawn as quickly as possible and then every small charge left leads to an overdraft fee. Only THEN will they post any deposits meaning that in some cases, people will get overdrafts even if they deposited enough money that day to prevent it.

(H/T to The Consumerist for the link)

Normally, you choose when and how much to pay on a credit card statement and this is how it should be. People can make mistakes, but that's what late fees and interest are for. The situation is balanced and needs no adjusting. Well, I think it needs some adjusting in consumers' favor, but whether you agree with me or not, it certainly doesn't need adjusting in the credit card company's favor.

The Consumerist has reported that the new changes to American Express usage terms allows them to debit your account in cases of "errors or questions". In other words, they can debit your bank account whenever they feel like it. If they think you did something wrong or they have a computing glitch, you may find yourself suddenly charged for some arbitrary amount.

I don't know about you, but the last thing I need is sudden and unexpected charges to my bank account. If this move is typical of AMEX, then perhaps that's the reason they are such an underdog in the credit card industry.

Carnegie Mellon University has released a report that privacy policies are too long and too complicated and regulation might be necessary to force companies to stop screwing around with people.

Now that a report has been produced saying what we knew all along, will anything come of it?

Simply put, media should be media, programs should be programs. Putting code or commands into media like movies, music, e-mail etc allows for viruses or worse and no one should have to worry about that. Well, worry.

If you put the new Blu-ray Iron Man movie into your computer it will try to connect to the Internet and download something (some horrible DRM program probably?).

From the "well freaking duh!" department comes a news story that Washington state (and Microsoft) are suing companies that use those fake security alerts to trick people into downloading and using their products. You know the ones. They usually say something like "Warning! Your computer is infected with viruses and you must download a quick security update to stop it".

Your first warning should be when they ask for your credit card number, but I don't hold that mistake against anyone. The real problem is the scumbag companies who utilize this kind of manipulation. It makes you wonder how they've gotten away with it for so long in the first place.

(H/T to Schneier's Blog for the link)

So I know that to buy a website that either the name of a famous person or business in the hopes of making them pay you bunches of money when they get smart enough to want that site is Cybersquatting and is illegal. Simple enough.

I also know that buying a domain that similar to a major site in the hopes of getting traffic from people who make spelling mistakes is also illegal. For example, if I were to register Hotmial and I got lots of traffic from people who meant to go to Hotmail. Clearly bad.

But here's the important question: what about ad squatters? Ad squatters are what I call those people who buy up every possible domain that consists of words or letter combinations that people would likely buy, park annoying ads on them and leave them there for all time. For you to actually get that site, you would have to pay a lot more money than if the site weren't registered assuming the ad squatter decides to sell at all.

I say ad squatting should also be illegal because if someone like me wants to register a domain name for a new business or website, I'm screwed because every possible good name has been taken. If some real company or individual somewhere legitimately used the site for their own blog or store, I wouldn't mind, but these jerks only have worthless ads and no content and do nothing to add to the Internet as a whole. In fact they make it worse because search engines often list them as relevant due to the domain name alone when in fact they have nothing useful on their pages at all.

I've read the stories about how these people make millions a year on these annoying ad pages, and I say screw them. I don't begrudge someone from coming up with a brilliant idea and making a lot of money, but when you're choking the opportunities of everyone else to do it at the same time, that's not ok.

So question time: Is this already illegal and either way is there anything someone can do to get a domain name away from one of these weasels? If not, does anyone know a senator they can convince to introduce a new bill or modification to one of the existing cybersquatting laws?

When this guy tried to sign up for Comcast cable without providing his Social Security Number, they harassed him saying that they were required to ask for it under the Patriot Act.

Deal with this by first finding out what they're going to do with it and how they're going to protect it. I would most likely use the '0' trick or just make sure your credit reports are frozen and they wouldn't be able to run credit on you even if they tried.

I really hate the kinds of things companies pull in their contracts and terms of service. Even more I hate when people say, "you signed it so quit complaining!" What they don't seem to understand is that even if the information is there, that doesn't mean that people can understand it or its implications.

Thus was the case in a Washington supreme court ruling that mightily smacked and slapped around the one-sided AT&T service agreement.

The court had the option of determining that some portions of the contract were legally valid and could be enforced. Instead, the ruling determined that unconscionable conditions pervaded the agreement, rendering it invalid in its entirety

Ha ha ha! Suck it AT&T!

Seriously though, it's nice to know that at last someone is standing up to these companies with their completely bogus one-sided agreements.

California, a historically consumer-friendly state, has recently won a settlement against Citibank for over 14 million dollars in theft from its customers. They apparently used a computer program to "sweep" up positive balances due to double paid bills or merchandise returns from customers' accounts into the Citibank's general fund.

So… What's in your wallet?