A couple of days back I came across this pieces of news: Defaulting credit cards will attract 49% interest now. Wow, that is one hell of a penal interest. In addition it has the blessings of the Supreme Court. Will all due respect it pains me to fathom how the court could have allowed such an atrocious interest rate even though it was a no-show from the defendant NGO body. Given bad times now with people losing jobs, the really unfortunate ones will now have the banks hot on their trail sucking them dry.
The most interesting part of this news item is this little jewel:
“Even the cost of acquiring a new customer, that is the cost of calls made randomly by authorised call centres urging people to take credit cards, is also taken into account for realisation through charging of penal interest from a defaulting card holder.”
First they harass us over phone with unwarranted calls, then they bring down the world economy and then they harass the unfortunate ones to recover the costs they incurred during the earlier unwarranted harassment cycle, to help survive the economic mess they created! Sweet.
February 12, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Thank God this is not happening in the US. Here such a high interest rate would be considered usury.
As a taxpayer getting stuck with the bill for the bad loans and subsequent bailout of banks that have made crummy loans, the complaints of these banks seem like crocodile tears to me.
Can we charge punitive interest rates to these banks taking funds from the taxpayers?
February 13, 2009 at 3:31 am
The bailout money can come with high interest rates. However for all you know they will find ways of passing on the punitive buck to their customers by hook or crook!