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

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.

Did you know that you could get DSL service WITHOUT having to have a phone land line with the same company? Probably not since the phone company won't tell you.

Check out this article for tips on how to teach the "Customer Service Reps" what and how to do it.

CNN has a story covering four of the new annoying fees you might see at the airport and how you might be able to avoid them. But then there's this…

By the way, there's plenty of evidence that the airlines are just getting started with their new fees. Once passengers are used to paying for beverages, checked luggage and "free" award tickets, it's on to bigger and better things for the chronically mismanaged airline industry.

What's next? No one knows.

And that's a very good reason to follow this advice:

Of course, the best way around all of these fees is to fly on an airline that doesn't have them. Southwest Airlines still allows you to check two bags at no extra charge. JetBlue still serves free drinks and snacks and charges $25 less than the big airlines for unaccompanied minors. Supporting these less fee-prone companies will hasten the inevitable demise of the airlines that erroneously believe they can surcharge their way back to a profit.

It's important to note here that Southwest is the only profitable airline and they've never had to stoop to this. Go figure.

(H/T to The Consumerist for the link)

At least one person was able to challenge a foreclosure because the bank that tried to foreclose didn't actually have the legal right to do so.

(H/T to The Consumerist for the link)

Originally, the bankruptcy laws were a catch-all for handling aggressive and dishonest lending allowing people to completely remove their debts once every 7 years. That way, even if someone made mistakes or was suckered in by bad credit deals, they could escape them under some circumstances and start over.

Lenders weren't happy with this and wanted it to be much harder for people to get out of the credit programs they carefully lured you into. They scored victory in 2005 by managing to secure a new law that made it much tougher for people to file bankruptcy, but didn't do anything to help curb the massive lending abuses by credit grantors. Now it seems the one-sided bill may have hurt lendors as much as it's helped them.

I've seen businesses do 4 and 5 so I guess next time, I'll call them on it.

1) Unsigned Cards Are Not Valid And Merchants Can And Will Refuse Them
2) The Maximum Liability For Unauthorized Use Of A Credit Card (not debit even if it's got a credit card logo) Is $50 According To Federal Law
3) Merchants Cannot Require You To Present ID, Unless Your Card Is Unsigned
4) Merchants Cannot Require A Minimum Transaction Amount
5) Merchants Cannot Charge A Surcharge For Using A Credit Card, However, They Can Offer A "Cash Discount"
6) Many Credit Cards Have Programs That Will Automatically Double The Manufacturer's Warranty And Other Excellent Benefits
7) Merchants Are Not Allowed To Make You Give Up Your Right To A Chargeback
Merchants Are Not Allowed To Place A Hold For The Estimated Tip
9) If Merchants Suspect You Of Fraud They Are Supposed To Call With A "Code 10"
10) If Merchants Break These Rules, You Can Report Them To The Credit Card Company

Read the details for each of these at The Consumerist.

A few important links:

Mystery Shoppers Find Deceit, Incompetence Among Tax Preparers

Tax Scams Proliferate In April

Tax Time Tips

If you weren't already suspicious of such services, you should be. Companies like this that prety on the weak and defenseless while simultaneously pretending to offer a helping hand are the worst kind of scum.

A city that found that the red light cameras made motorists more cautious resulting in less tickatable offenses turned them off.

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

Maybe now I can stop referring to myself as "paranoid" and just use the term "Security Professional" instead.

In a Wired.com essay, Bruce Schneier writes how security professionals just think differently. While engineers try to figure out how to make things work, Security Professionals think about how to break them.

For example:

SmartWater is a liquid with a unique identifier linked to a particular owner. "The idea is for me to paint this stuff on my valuables as proof of ownership," I wrote when I first learned about the idea. "I think a better idea would be for me to paint it on your valuables, and then call the police."

And it's simply thinking in this way that would prevent a lot of bad products (like smart water) from ever being developed in the first place.

It's worth repeating that if you get charged for something you didn't ask for, you should challenge it. One point this article makes that I want to stress, sometimes you get signed up for something because you didn't notice and uncheck a box during a transaction with some other company or you had a free trial and it charged you after it was over.

These are dishonest and while they might technically be legal (though they shouldn't be), it's worth challenging them all the same.

Just as AOL was the first to go to unlimited Internet access in the 90's thus changing the way Internet service is charged, Verizon is making that step in the wireless communications field. All I can say is that it's about damn time.

Wireless companies have been robbing people for years with their ridiculous rate plans and minute to minute charges. Now that they're going flat rate, chances are that the prices will come down just like they did for Internet service so many years ago.

I'm putting out the call for all people who get money unexpectedly to take the unpopular route and use it to pay down some debt rather than spend it. The very idea that you are in a position to spend new money while you're in debt at all is why Americans and America is in so much trouble right now.

Embrace the philosophy of a The Total Money Makeover and work towards it. Even if it violates the implanted logic that businesses and the credit industry have forced upon you, work your way out of debt before starting new ones and learn to live debt free.

Now realistically, I will probably spend some of the money on something nice like going out to dinner or a small gift for my wife. Psychologically, many of us will need to spend at least some of the money, but I'm OK with doing that if you still apply the vast majority to outstanding debts.

This is a nice article explaining the five major monthly bills you should be ditching until you are debt-free (on your credit cards and accounts anyway). Included is the whining they know you'll do when you hear their recommendation:

5) Cable. Your Excuse: "But, but, but I need cable! I get a good deal! It's only $100 a month! I use it a lot! It's bundled with my phone and my internet. I'll only save $30 a month if I cancel it."

It's really sad how well the marketing has worked that people believe they really need and use this stuff. I have never had cable TV service. You can rent the best shows in the stores, borrow them from friends or just watch it with a regular antenna (for stuff that comes on the major channels). A lot of new shows are available from the networks directly on the Internet anyway.

The one service they forgot to mention was cellphone. Most people probably forget that it's just a convenience, not a necessity.

If you've been on college campuses these days, you'll often see the booths where you get a free shirt or coffee mug for signing up for a credit card. Well, it's pretty obvious that college kids have no idea how to handle credit and the credit card companies know it.

Rhoades took the job and signed up roughly 30 students for cards. He regrets any trouble he caused other students from his actions.

Still, his actions may have been most damaging to himself. He ended up with $13,000 worth of debt that he is now struggling to repay.

We don't get any training how to deal with and manage credit, but we get plenty of training on how to get and abuse it. So sad…

(H/T to The Consumerist for the link)

Says the only person to vote against the bill: "We are putting this industry out of business".

Well, yeah. You are. Kudos for all those who voted for it!

It's not as good as West Virginia(who banned all payday lending), but Oregon has taken a first important step to contain the evil that is payday lending.

The new laws should significantly ease the triple-digit interest rates charged by payday lenders and their cousins, auto title lenders. Indeed, payday lenders say the new laws will drive them out of the state altogether. Whether that is so remains to be seen, but the laws still allow payday lenders, through a combination of interest rates and "origination fees," to charge effective annual interest rates of well over 150% on one-month loans.

I like this line too:

If that's so, however, the demise of the industry might not be a bad thing at all. Any industry whose best argument is that it can only make money by exploiting the worst of its credit risks, and keeping them in a never-ending cycle of renewals and interest payments, doesn't seem to have much going for it.

Hear, hear.

A former payday scum manager comes clean in a video released by The Center for Responsible Lending.

In this 4 minute video, Rebecca tells how payday loans are rarely two-week loans. Most of her customers came in payday after payday to renew the loan—after the first time, they couldn't afford to pay it off. Rebecca tells how she and her co-workers explained away the 400% interest rate, and how tough their collection tactics were. And she tells how she came to understand that rather than help her customers, these loans were "keeping them poor."

Now if Virginia would just kick out the whole industry like West Virginia did.

This has promise. Apparently, the Credit Card Act of 2007 will ban some of the less consumer friendly practices of credit card companies.

Here are some of the provisions and what I think they mean:

Summary

That's most of the really important stuff anyway. The Consumerist has a link to an online form that will help you tell your congressmembers to support this so be sure to head over there for it.