Of Discover Card and Congressional Hearings

I hear today that several credit card companies will be called before Congress today to 'chat' about some of their current horrid practices in the face of the credit crisis. While I do understand that they are losing a ton of money with people losing jobs/not paying their obligations, I do NOT feel for them at all as it relates to people who are 'doing the right thing'. Here's the lesson for today: the credit card companies are charging fees and exorbitant rates due to OTHER people's problems and they are passing on their costs to YOU. Be careful out there with your credit and definitely do NOT end up paying late or you will face high fees AND they may randomly up your interest rate! Check out Clark Howard's website for more info on that kind of thing, but here's my beef with Discover.

Discover Card is not as popular as Visa/Mastercard and AMEX (though many people don't take AMEX due to their high fees). I had a Discover card for almost 2 decades and had a decent credit line. As you can imagine, after starting a new business we had a few bills. I took advantage of a zero percent balance transfer with Discover and had to pay it off before March 25th or I'd be hit with all the interest I deferred. Guess what? I DID MY PART. I paid it in full and felt very happy and proud to retire that debt. What did THEY do? They REWARDED me by sending a letter to say that my credit line was reduced to $500.00 (it was over 10K before). SO this is how they rewarded me for doing what I agreed to do (and I never had a blemish with them for all these years). Why? because I ran up a balance and paid it off... they considered me a credit risk because it was admittedly a high balance--but I paid it off??? Well, I rewarded THEM by cancelling the card.

Moral of the story? Do business with 'loyal' friends; don't reward people who screw you over! Even though Discover is the preferred card at Sam's club, I'll use my M/C instead! Be careful out there!