AP: Late bills for credit cards set a record

[question everything]

Late bills for credit cards set a record

Gas prices, low savings, cost of borrowing cited

By Jeannine Aversa
ASSOCIATED PRESS

September 29, 2005

(snip)

The American Bankers Association reported yesterday that the percentage of credit-card accounts 30 or more days past due climbed to an all-time high of 4.81 percent in the April-to-June period. It could grow in the months ahead, experts said.

The previous high of 4.76 percent came during the first three months of the year, in keeping with a generally steady rise over the past several years.

(snip)

The personal savings rate dipped to a record low of negative 0.6 percent in July. The negative percentage means that people didn't have enough left over after paying their taxes to cover all of their spending in July. As a result, they dipped into savings to cover the shortfall. When people have less money available to pay for energy costs or emergencies such as a big car repair, many resort to credit. That option is getting more expensive, too.

The Federal Reserve has been tightening credit since June 2004. That has caused commercial banks' prime lending rate to rise to 6.75 percent, the highest in four years. These rates are used for many short-term consumer loans, including credit cards and popular home-equity lines of credit.

Late payments may be bad news for consumers, but credit-card companies don't necessarily mind them because late fees are a source of revenue.

(snip)

Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050929/news_1b29loans.html

[LaPera]

1. Records are made to be broken, wait until next quarter, then next, then...

[LaPera]

2. Records are made to be broken, wait until next quarter, then next, then...

[skids]

3. What I want to know is...

...how many of these late payments have billing addresses on the Gulf Coast?

[pitohui]

5. don't worry abt that just yet

they're talking abt the april to june quarter

july thru september shouldn't show late payments from august & september, the credit card companies are putting credits on yr bill to keep your bill from accumulating any late fees, they know abt the storm, these credits appeared on my bill w.out asking, i was worried because i couldn't get my mail nor could i get online in the early days of the storm to pay a couple of bills that had come due...turned out they had it set up automatically so no late fees would be charged

i think most ppl are getting 90 days reprieve in the affected zip codes

if you were affected by rita or katrina, and you don't get an automatic extension on yr bills, i would suggest calling to get this fixed

no one is trying to profit off late fees caused by katrina, that's the kind of publicity nobody needs

[mike_c]

4. an increase of 0.05 percent-- five hundredths of one percent....

Time for some new regulations to protect the credit and banking industries!

Wait until substantial numbers of borrowers can't make their payments. That's when the excrement will hit the fan.