AUDIO: More than 1/3 of consumers penalized by credit card companies

SAN FRANCISCO
March 3, 2009 10:51am

One out of every three (33.7 percent) consumers say their credit card company has tried to penalize them for being customers, according to a survey from Credit.com Inc., a San Francisco-based consumer education and financial services company.

According to the survey, credit card companies have made one or more of the following changes to their customers’ accounts:

• Increased their interest rate (15 percent reported this)

• Increased their minimum payment due (11 percent reported this)

• Changed their due date (9 percent reported this)

• Lowered their credit limit (8 percent reported this)

• Reduced their rewards program (8 percent reported this)

• Closed their account (7 percent reported this)

"Despite efforts to get credit flowing again to consumers, for many, the exact opposite is happening," says Adam Levin, chairman of Credit.com. "Even responsible consumers are discovering that a lowered limit or a closed account can impact their credit score for years. It is critical that business, government, public interest organizations and the media work together to significantly improve and expand credit and financial help and education."

(Gerri Detweiler, a credit advisor at Credit.com, talks about what consumers may be able to do to fend off some of these changes in a CVBT Audio Interview. Please left-click on the link below to listen or right-click to download the MP3 audio file.)

This national telephone poll was conducted for Credit.com by GfK Custom Research North America from Feb. 20-22, 2009. A total of 1,004 interviews were completed, with 524 female adults and 480 male adults. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points for the full sample and higher for subgroups at a 95 percent level of confidence.