William Pryor: “I offer my amendment because I want to address a practice in the credit card industry. Basically, what happens with some…”

“I offer my amendment because I want to address a practice in the credit card industry. Basically, what happens with some card companies--and not all of them, certainly--is they make it a practice to look at their cardholders' credit reports on a monthly basis. When they find that the cardholder has a late payment maybe on a utility bill, or a car note, or whatever the case may be, they will actually raise the interest rate on the cardholder, even though they may have made every credit card payment on time. They use that as a justification to raise the interest rate on the cardholder. I think that is an unfair practice. It is fraught with all kinds of problems, including the problem that many of these credit reports contain errors. I have certainly been subject to those. I am sure almost every Senator in this Chamber has been subject to an error on their credit report at one time or another. The credit card companies don't take that into consideration. They will routinely increase interest rates. I think it is an unfair business practice. We are talking about bankruptcy. We all know that one of the main reasons people get into financial trouble is because they have credit cards. Sometimes they abuse them. Sometimes the interest rate is so high that it creates great difficulty on our citizens. I think this amendment is important.”