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No this is not a seasonal warning about thieves and pick-pockets (well certainly not the usual variety) but rather a heads up about the annual onslaught of direct mail from those glorious companies who have our welfare dearest to their hearts, the Worlds Credit Card Companies! Bless them they have had a hard time this year with the annual revenue per card halving in the past five years, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers in their recent report Precious Plastic 2007. All because by and large we have managed to get to grips with the ways they have been robbing the living daylights out of us for the past god knows how long! Apparently their problems are largely threefold (he says trying hard not to laugh) and they are roughly the following: 1.The number of people who are euphemistically known as Rate Tarts that is to say those who rather smartly are able to take advantage of being able to move their debts from one card to another taking advantage of interest free and low interest deal has grown. The downside of this type of action is that you have to be very careful and time it to perfection to make this sort of activity work for you. I know of at least one major Credit Card Company that establishes its major model of Customer acquisition through offering ridiculous deals at the start and working on the principle that some poor unfortunates will get it wrong and end up paying for the rest. I mean where else would you get away with going from zero to 29.9% in less than a Month. In the old days it was called usury! 2.Apparently bad debts are on the rise again? Well that one took a lot to spot! Wow, never saw that one coming! If you take your little bits of plastic and offer them to kids who have no idea of ever having had to budget in their lives before OR (and this is more of a heinous crime) prey upon those who are already in financial difficulties then you should hardly complain when you occasionally get it wrong! It would appear the effects of never having had it so good has been to cause more than the usual number of households to overstretch themselves on the old household front and now are struggling to make their payments 3.Lastly, it would appear that (certainly in the UK and I am sure in the US too) that the Authorities have got wise to what is going on and at last decided to get heavy with them over their laughably ridiculous penalties and fines for late payments. I know of another poor individual who got close to their credit limit, an unexpected payment came in (despite that fact that the electronic control system should not have authorised it), took them over their limit and then got hit with a double jeopardy of late payment / over the limit fees leading to more, yes you have guessed, it more over limit fees and then the whole thing compounded nicely downhill from there on in! The bottom line to all of this is that is that in the UK for their 32 million Card holders the Credit Card Companies are looking to recoup upwards of 1 billion pounds in potential lost revenues! Watch out, Bandits about!
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