The Good Guy Tuna Fish Company: Your Credit Card Issuer?

A very smart man once told me the true value of being a better company. Not only from the perspective of being more efficient and profitable, but also better to the people we’re privileged to call our customers. One of the issues that we always found confusing was the perceived lack of any sort of public relations involvement with company decisions. Now don’t get me wrong; I fully believe public relations play a part in every company’s policies. But I’m not so sure how prevalent a role it plays.

Case in point, the CARD Act. Large credit card issuers will be forced to change how they do some of their business. For the majority of the latter part of 2009, it seemed like the banking industry was blaming future higher prices on lawmakers who were trying to change the system with the CARD Act legislation. This made them sound unsympathetic, uncaring and, frankly, evil.

Now it seems like one large credit card issuer has broken out of the pack and embraced the value of good public relations when it comes to changing policy. Several weeks ago, Bank of America sent notices to many of their cardholders explaining how they were going to comply with the CARD Act. And if any of you read the notice (many people do not), you would have seen a crystal clear explanation of their new law as well as their actions to comply with the new law. Barclay’s and Home Depot Card Services did the same.

Bank of America has even created a new summary of your rates, fees, and payment information called a Clarity Commitment®. I have to tell you that I’ve been reading bank communications for 20 years now, and this is easily one of the most clearly written communications I’ve seen. And unless you don’t speak 8th grade English, Bank of America cardholders now will have a better understanding of the terms of their account and the actions that will be taken by the bank if you do certain things.... and avoid doing others.

So instead of telling us that credit is going to cost more for everyone and that access to credit will be limited for those with poor credit, why not change it from a negative to a positive? Comply early, comply often, embrace the new rules, and look at it as an opportunity to engage with your cardholders. Become the Good Guy Tuna Fish Company!!

John Ulzheimer – Credit scoring and credit reporting expert and author, John is the President of Consumer Education for Credit.com. Formerly with Equifax and Fair Isaac, John shares his unique insight of the inner workings of credit scoring models and the credit reporting industry on CreditBloggers.com.

Comments

[Eadwacer]

So, why is it, when we complained at our BofA branch about the changes they made to their CC rules last year (we'll bill you when we feel like it, and you have to pay up fast), the bank manager said that BofA doesn't control this, it's Visa that makes these decisions

[JohnUlzheimer]

So you had a BofA employee really tell you "we'll bill you when we feel like it and you have to pay up fast?" That just sounds so unbelievable to me. I cant fathom anyone other than a loan shark saying that to a debtor. Clearly the new CARD Act cleans that up. The credit card bill
has to be due on the same day each month and you have at least 21 days from when it is mailed to pay it.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [CreditBloggers] Eadwacer submitted a comment to The Good Guy
Tuna Fish Company... Your Credit Card Issuer?

[Eadwacer]

Um...no, sorry, that was a paraphrasing of the new ToS forced on Visa cusomers by BofA last year. I don't have the paperwork with the exact wording handy, but essentially, they said they send out the bill at a time convenient to them (paraphrase) rather than on some specific day of the month, and you then have some reduced number of days (10?) to pay. It's what made us move most of our banking to the credit union. When we were moving the savings account, and told them we didn't like their cc policies, the response was...that's Visa, not us.