Please.....SOMEBODY help me understand

I don't have a degree in finances but to me it seems like a no-brainer. If times are tough and jobs are scarce....WHY would a big bank want to make things TOUGHER on those poor souls who DO still have an income? Seems like they would WANT to keep the money moving....keep customer satisfaction high...get the people who do have an income to actually SPEND some of it. Makes sense to me.

However.............

I must have dozed off while taking the class of Life and How to Come Out of It Alive. A lot of what's happening now just plain doesn't make any sense at all. Case in point.

I open up my MasterCard bill and note that the monthly amount due has increased quite a bit. Now I rarely use this card because it has a high balance and I'm trying desperately to pay it off by making double payments. I immediately suspect that fraud has occurred and there have been charges added to this account but that hasn't happened. Instead....much to my dismay....I observe that my interest rate has increased.

Now I realize that everyone is out there to make more money.....to bleed you dry....and I would have accepted a small increase of a couple percentage points with only a little cussing to myself. But they more than doubled my interest rate. Yep....to a whopping 21.4%....an increase of 11%. You can imagine how much it made my monthly payment SOAR. This is a card I've had for 25 years and have NEVER been late on a payment or over-extended my credit limit.

I called them today. I wanted to yell and scream but that does no good at all. After all, the person I'm talking to doesn't make the rules and doesn't own the bank. Bottom line.....I did get my interest lowered 5% so now I'm at 16.4%, which doesn't make me happy but its better than what it was. I just wish I had the money to pay it off and close it but if I could have done that, I would have done it long ago.

So, can anybody help me understand this. WHY....when so many people are hurting....does a bank UP the interest rate so your payments go higher when everyone has to watch every penny right now. I am going to research this and am going to find the right people to contact to get some sort of legislature going that will put a cap on these credit card companies.....that they can no longer just up your interest on a whim. This is just so wrong. Yes, I know. I shouldn't have credit cards. My dad never had them and always chastised me. But some people ..... like me ...just don't have resources to pay cash for needed items. I am helping a disabled daughter and her two kids also. If you keep up your end of the contract and pay your bills on time, they should have no right to raise your interest rates. I can understand late fees and the over-extend-your-credit-line punishment fees and returned check fees....but not this. (putting soap box away now).

Why I color my hair.....

Sheesh….when is this garbage going to STOP. Yesterday was a bear of a day. It was just one thing after another at work. I was so glad when the day finally ended and it was time to lock up and come home. All I wanted to do was get in my jammies and relax with a pot of fresh, steaming coffee.

At home however, in my mailbox, I had received notification that my personal information, along with thousands of others, had been mishandled and lost. In other words, someone lost several boxes of tapes….or else they were stolen…who knows anymore. But they have to advise me that my info is out there for the picking …my name, address and the good old social security number. PEOPLE!!! Have you not ever heard of encryption???? This is a big investment company I’m talking about here. They have my info because I have a few shares of Disney stock.

And get THIS. To make it up to me for THEM being careless with my personal information that could allow thousands of dollars to be charged in my name, they are going to GIVE me…. ..Abolutely FREE of charge….(gasp) a whopping TWENTY-FOUR HOURS of credit monitoring. And to add insult to injury….they discovered the box was missing in FEBRUARY and its taken them all this time to figure out whose names were on the tapes that are now LORD KNOWS WHERE. My guess would be somewhere in BFE where the info is being sold to the highest bidder as I write. So, this kind of makes this 24-hour monitoring gift of theirs a bit ASSININE, doesn’t it. This is a laugh. It’s an embarrassment. If I wasn’t so mad right now I really would laugh.

The last time my identity was stolen it was used to create a fraudulent account in my name for a cell phone, I put a flag on my name with all three credit bureaus but I think it has expired by now. It took me months to sort all that out and I had intense hatred for the woman that used my name 1500 miles away from where I live. Thankfully, I did not have to pay any of it after proving that I was really me and that I live HERE and not THERE…..plus the signatures didn’t match. HA. So now what. I guess I will call all three credit bureaus and see if I can flag my name again.

We just have to come up with a better system. I say banks or any organization that requires your social security number for their files should be MANDATED, by law, to encrypt every single piece of data that they create and/or store that includes that information. And the government should assign watchdogs to make sure that it’s being carried out. That way if something is misplaced or stolen it would be useless. See? I’m just an average Jane and I figured that out….WHY CAN’T THEY?

*UPDATE – I tried to call the three credit bureaus this morning, using the 800 numbers given in my correspondence and all I got were computerized menus that send you in a frenzy of never-ending circles but no human. (don’t any of these companies employ humans anymore?) Something tells me that this is going to be a Catch-22 situation, but I will keep trying. After all, I wouldn’t want to be afflicted with mind-numbing boredom by having my days blend into a ho-hum cycle of everything going effing RIGHT for a while. Oh, how frightening that would be…..I always have been afraid of the unfamiliar and unknown! I need a drink.

*SECOND UPDATE - Upon reading Fiwa's comment, I decided to try what she suggested and ask for more credit protection. Well, I guess I was so upset when reading the letter, I mis-read what they had offered. It was 24 MONTH protection, not 24-hour, which makes a lot more sense. I also took Anonymous Boxer's advice and forgot about the 800 number and went to the Internet. I'm now enrolled. Thanks to both of you for the advice. However.....I'm still ticked off that they were careless....and I STILL need that drink! HA.