It's not surprising that people get into debts like the ones described in the article. Credit card companies want you to be terribly indebted to them.
I had an uncle who suffered brain damage from an aneurism that left him unable to handle money- memory issues, disorganization, etc. He was never going to be able to pay back credit cards and my mother (his PoA and lawyer) informed the credit card companies of this. They sent the cards anyways. They wanted him to go into debt, hoping that his family would bail him out.
There's more profit in taking advantage of people than there is in being a decent person. Unregulated free markets cannot account for that reality. We in Canada have some regulations, but clearly not strong enough ones to prevent this kind of predatory lending.
Unregulated free markets? The banking/loan industry is a heavily regulated industry in both Canada and the US.
Yes, predatory lending exists and it may be immoral, but it still requires the other side to agree to it. And keep in mind that the other side frequently has no intention/ability of paying. That is at minimum acting in bad faith and is usually against the law, even if there is no misrepresentation of income, assets, etc. In many jurisdictions, merely taking out an unsecured loan without the intention of actually paying it back (regardless of what the lender says or does) is technically illegal.
I didn't mean to imply people were rational. Not only are people frequently not rational, there is also an information asymmetry that is involved with most financial/legal/medical decisions that would make people elect choices that are not in their own best interest.
I wasn't trying to say they were rational, merely that they are still required to agree to the terms of the predatory lending and they should still be considered responsible for their choices. Also, I wanted to point out that they frequently are not the innocent victims that they are made out to be. Many times they are just as bad as the lenders simply because they don't intend to pay. The lenders are just far better at inducing payment than crooked borrowers are at getting away without paying the money back.
Look at student loans. Nearly half of all students think that their loans will be forgiven eventually. Maybe they are right, maybe they aren't. No one knows. But the point is that they are taking on the loans because they don't expect to be held liable for and required to pay back in full.
> keep in mind that the other side frequently has no intention/ability of paying. That is at minimum acting in bad faith and is usually against the law
I see. My complaint is that a credit card company knowingly took advantage of a disabled man, and your answer is that he was the villain in the situation.
The man sometimes couldn't tell what was real vs what he had imagined happened. He couldn't go too far from home alone because he would forget how to get back. He was a wonderful human being, a hilarious story teller, and happened to be disabled because of a health issue.
In many countries, particularly European ones, knowingly giving loans to people you know will be unable to pay you back or are unable to handle money responsibly due to a medical condition, is basically handing out free money.
The moment a court hears of it ALL your claims against that person will be forfeit and the blame will lie squarely with you. I'd be surprised if Canada/US doesn't have similar provisions.
It might, but I would wager that making it to court isn't a cheap proposition - you'd likely need to retain an attorney, pay all sorts of fees, and even with a judgement against you, you now have to track down all of the places your debt has been sold off to, repair your credit history, etc.
Not easy even if you're in full control of your mental faculties.
It doesn't do much that is useful in the uncle's situation.
If you register for it then you won't get unsolicited credit offers from companies you don't have an affiliation with. So American Express can only go pulling random people they aren't affiliated with a score of over 700 or whatever and send card offers only to people who haven't opted out.
However, it doesn't prevent companies from marketing credit offers to people they do have an affiliation with. So if you have an AMEX card then American Express can market other American Express cards to you even if you signed up for prescreen opt out, and your bank can market their cards to you, and your airline rewards program can market their cards to you, etc.
That website was set up as a result of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (which also allows people in the US a free credit report once a year) which only applies to Americans.
I had a more cynical view that it was so the credit card companies had the fewest amount of people opt out. They could have made that site apply to anyone worldwide but that would hurt themselves.
No, you're not clear on your understanding, that site isn't run by credit card companies, it's run by the three credit bureaus.
Basically, credit card companies (and insurance companies) buy consumer data from the credit bureaus to send unsolicited offers. That site is for you to register with the bureaus that you don't want your credit report sold in that way. That's how come companies can still send you unsolicited credit offers when they already have your information from elsewhere, such as from your bank account or frequent flyer account.
I don't know which, if any bureaus operate in Canada or how that are allowed or not allowed to sell your data. That particular site gives you specifics information about American law (FCRA), and how things work in America with credit bureaus information sharing - it's completely irrelevant for Canada.
I don't know what we have, but I know that apparently, having a lawyer and power of attorney tell a credit card company to not send credit cards wasn't enough.
I had an uncle who suffered brain damage from an aneurism that left him unable to handle money- memory issues, disorganization, etc. He was never going to be able to pay back credit cards and my mother (his PoA and lawyer) informed the credit card companies of this. They sent the cards anyways. They wanted him to go into debt, hoping that his family would bail him out.
There's more profit in taking advantage of people than there is in being a decent person. Unregulated free markets cannot account for that reality. We in Canada have some regulations, but clearly not strong enough ones to prevent this kind of predatory lending.