Chase recently increased my minimum payment from 2% to 5%, increasing my payment from $400 to $1100 per month. I've had the account with them for many years and had an excellent payment history, like with all my creditors. I called and told them this extra $700 per month is not affordable (I have 18 other bills to pay every month) and reminded them that not only are we in a recession, i'm in one of the hardest hit industries, real estate , and in one of the hardest hit areas...they wouldn't budge, so I missed the payment. And will miss the next one in a few days. My questions are, will my other credit card companies "pull the plug" once the late payment starts showing up on my credit report. The other question is: they have really angered me, this is how I'm rewarded after years of faithful payments, can I sue them?, they have destroyed my good credit. any help will be appreciated Thanks
Of course you can sue them. You can sue anybody for just about anything. That's not the problem. The problem is that you can't win against them because you don't have a valid cause of action. There is no law against them charging you any amount of interest they want to or at least up to the legal limits. Don't let your anger get in the way of using good sense. If you don't like their new terms the only viable answer is to pay them off in full and don't do business with them any more. Don't cut up your cards either. Keep them. They might come in awfully handy as evidence later down the road. And just because you think you paid them all they claim you owe at one point in time and can now safely cut up the cards, don't do it because you can bet they will take your money and then add in more charges for closing the account or whatever they can think of. Pay them off and wait a month and call them up and ask them if you owe them any more money. Do that every month for the next 2 or 3 months after having paid them off. You could end up in big trouble if you don't do that and they add more charges after you close the account. A couple of years later you could wake up and find out that you owe a few thousand in extra charges you didn't know you owed. That has happened to more people than you could ever imagine. But above all, don't let your anger get the better of your common sense. You will be very sorry if you do.
The Credit CARD Act bans Universal default, but that unfortunately doesn't take effect until February of next year. Minimum payments, on the other hand, can still be changed by the credit issuers at will. As of August 20th, they just need to give you 45 days notice.
I received this notice on my Chase account back in June. It DID allow you to "opt out" but the notice to them had to be received before August 1, when the changes took place. It's probably tool late, but I would suggest that the OP CONTACT Chase and beg to opt out. Of course this would mean you could no longer use that card but it would protect your credit history and remember, even accounts closed (in good standing), report for 10 yrs. so you AAA would not be affected. The route you have chosen will destroy your credit.
As always, there are exceptions. The new rules don't allow consumers to opt out of hikes in minimum payments. In fact, I actually don't think the credit issuers are even "required" to give 45 days' notice of the change, like they are for increases in interest rates and other fees. Some still choose to do so.
All I know is that.... I defaulted on a bunch of cards. My Capital One card remained current and there hasn't been any problem there. They haven't even raised my rates. But I believe that is because I've kept a balance on there. As long as there is a balance that I am paying on, they don't want to cut me off. Another card that was in good standing for years but had no balance was closed by the issuer with no notice to me. So, my experience suggests that keeping an ongoing balance on the card (and paying on it) will prevent cancellation.
While it's an unpleasant thought, it might be that they want to force a resolution of this debt because they think that problems are coming, perhaps exactly because you are in a hard hit industry in a hard hit area. They may think that the first shark to take a bite gets the most fish, so by forcing you to either pay now or default, they can get the first pound of flesh.
