Example # 1
A big credit card company sent me an offer. They have a TV advertising campaign second to none in my opinion; opinion though it is. They offered me more credit than I needed at 0% interest for a year, and then something like 12.9% fixed after that. I was paying close to 20% on my present card, so I called them up. After struggling to understand someone with a thick East-Asian accent who persisted in avoiding my questions by answering me with script from a computer screen, I found them thereafter to be simple crooks. They went and transferred only a portion of the debt I requested. Had I been informed that they would only honor a small percentage of my “Pre-Approval,” I would have turned them down. Who needs another credit card to nursemaid? Then after the year at 0% expired I noticed one month, following my making a larger than usual payment, that I owed more the next month than I did before.
As it turns out they were now charging me over 30% interest. I didn’t even bother to call them until I had transferred enough money to pay them in full. You see they have certain spells they cast in the fine print of those sheets of paper they send you. These witch crafts are cooked by attorneys in large snake oil tubs that are heated and spiced for hours on end. They are translated into legal English and then printed finely on the sheets they send to you.
If your payment is over four minutes and thirty-seven seconds of being late, these spells take effect causing the interest and their interest in you, to rise. The numbers go up and the chances that you are now under a spell of monetary servitude increases exponentially.
I wasn’t going to look into the exact spell they had cast in my case. They have so many. One spell kicks in if on any given Tuesday the Federal Reserve Chairman experiences indigestion. Unlike most folks, I was lucky, for I had the means to break their spells. I simply paid them off and sent them a listing of the best parks in town for kite flying.