As a personal finance writer, I am having so much fun with the new congress! It’s only been a few weeks since the 110th congress took power but already we’ve seen action on the credit bureau dispute process, health care costs, IRS collection agencies, reverse mortgages, student loan interest rates, health care costs, Social Security number privacy and more. It’s hard to keep up with all these exciting new consumer finance developments!
The latest news on financial industry reforms comes from Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Dodd has vowed to investigate credit card issuer practices that are unfair to consumers and has planned a series of hearings. In response to this new scrutiny, other Democrats have been submitting a variety of ideas for reform. For today’s survey, share your opinion about which of the proposed reforms you’d most like see come into effect:
Don’t see your ideal credit card reform on this list? Share your ideas in the comments section below!
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THIS IS WHAT THE CREDIT CARD INDUSTRY DID TO ME AND MY BUSINESS.
We are the owners of A&B Enterprises dba Fantasyline. We had been in business for 23 years. Our business was adult talk lines. We have always used live operators to screen our callers and verify bank information. We had excellent fraud control and verification procedures. Our primary form of payment was VISA and MasterCard. We had various merchant accounts. Initially we had merchant accounts with banks. At some point these banks discontinued telephone order processing and or credit card processing so we switched to third party processors etc. Our merchant accounts never had a bad mark against them. They were never cancelled due to chargebacks.
Our last processor was Online Data in Westchester IL. In December 2004 they informed us that they had to switch our account. In April 2005 they stated they could not switch our account because we sold downloadable DVD’s. This was false. We enclosed a letter to that effect to Online Data. The letter did no good and Online Data informed us that due to the nature of our business they could no longer process our charges.
Online Data recommended we contact Nelix to find a merchant account. Nelix refereed us to ECS World UK. This arrangement did not work out as ECS World UK failed to pay us monies owed.
Due to the loss of our merchant account we had to close our business. Online Data claimed that they were being forced to close all Adult Oriented Web Businesses by Visa and Mastercard International and Chase JP Morgan Bank. Fantasyline never was a Web Business. Closing our business abruptly caused us severe hardship.
All deprived us of our livelihood. Aside from depriving us of our livelihood and the complications that caused, we always paid high merchant fees.
Marcia Siegel
marciasiegel2004@yahoo.com