People sometimes assume that I have a personal issue with credit cards because I write a lot about the card industry and often argue that its practices are harmful to consumers and to general welfare.
I really don’t. I just think they are an amazing laboratory for examining contractual relationships and bargaining power. Frankly, I’m surprised that more people don’t study them, because they are the most ubiquitous type of consumer contract and are at the very core of the network of contracts that makes up our consumer economy.
This week, however, it got personal. I fell into the card industry’s billing practice traps. And the funny thing is that this is because the card issuer screwed up. In the end I don’t actually owe any money (alas, there’s still some issues to resolve)–but I could have very easily ended up paying a lot of money I didn’t owe. The ridiculous twists and turns in my saga are illustrative of the serious problems that exist with credit cardholder agreements and why there needs to be legislative limits placed on the terms of these agreements.