Sean Patrick Maloney: “I continue to be very, very troubled by some pricing strategies used by certain companies, and I believe that the…”

“I continue to be very, very troubled by some pricing strategies used by certain companies, and I believe that the Sanders amendment provides a needed reform. The amendment affects how credit card companies use information from credit reports to increase interest rates on their customers. This devious practice is known as 'bait and switch,' where a consumer's low interest rate may be increased to 20 percent or higher simply because they may have taken out a new mortgage or some other liability. A recent New York Times article documented just such a case where an Illinois doctor had his rate go from 6.2 percent to over 16 percent when he took out a mortgage. The amendment merely allows the consumer a window of 60 days before their rates are increased, in the event they were on a vacation or got sick or missed a payment or were experiencing some type of short-term financial difficulty.”