If somebody steals your credit card and runs up a huge bill, you can only be held responsible for $50 in damages. Your bank has to eat the rest.
The reason for this is that Congress passed the Fair Credit Billing Act in 1974. That's where the $50 maximum comes from.
Can you imagine such a bill being passed today? Why not?
Sadly, no.
The moneyed interests have seized control of both parties.
Uh, why? I would think that quite to the contrary, the Democratic Party supported the CFPB, and if this sort of law didn't exist, the Democratic Party would want to pass it.
It's the *Republicans* who would oppose such a law, just as they oppose the CFPB.
This and so many other things ...like my civil roghts.
Unfortunately, unless something gets bipartisan support, Democrats can’t actually pass anything that helps regular people. King Manchin and Pixie Princess Sinema decreed this for the current electoral cycle, as have their ideologically confused predecessors in previous electoral cycles.
There’s no way a $50 limit on credit card fraud law would be passed with anything but a Democratic trifecta, of which we’ve only had 3 in my lifetime I think.
Manchin and Sinema are not the entire party.
So, seems like you support the outcome which makes both parties 'the same.'
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Shirley everything should index to inflation, so today that should be more like $330, no? ...
This is one instance where not adjusting for inflation is a good thing.
Yeah, it eases us into a better policy.
If only we could get someone like Nixon as president again.
Relative to everyone the Republicans have put forth over the past 40 years, Nixon would be a vast improvement.
I hate to admit it, since I spent my college years (I 'm class of '75 and cast my first vote for McGovern) hating Nixon with a white hot passion, but yes, the historical President Nixon would be a ridiculously good improvement over current Republicans. As would most Republicans of that era to a greater or lesser extent. But there is a major caveat. We are talking about the actual Nixon who was born in 1913 and was president from 1969 to 1974. Had Tricky Dicky been born 50-60 years later and was today an ambitious 40 to 60-year old Republican politician, he would almost certainly be a hard line MAGAt out of a mixture of political preference and careerism.
If only the Republican Party still had Senators like Thomas Kuchel:
“During the 1966 California gubernatorial primary, Kuchel was urged by moderates to run against conservative actor Ronald Reagan. Citing the hostilities of the growing conservative movement, Kuchel decided not to run. He instead issued a negative statement about the conservatives: "A fanatical neo-fascist political cult of right-wingers in the GOP, driven by a strange mixture of corrosive hatred and sickening fear that is recklessly determined to control our party or destroy it!" ‘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuchel
Thank you for posting this; I was acutely aware of the party changes - 1960, 1964, 1965 - but don't remember this, despite subscriptions to both The Washington Post & Evening Star back then .Perhaps the full text didn't get enough attention in DC media then?
What a prescient statement, boldly expressed - & one which wasn't heeded by the less courageous members of his party.
If my web search was accurate, Nixon had resigned by the time this legislation was passed.
That said, Donald Trump has been the best thing to happen for Nixon’s reputation…
And George W. Bush's.
Well, the liberal policies of Nixon (creating the EPA for gosh sakes!) was a foundational moment for organizing the far right. Much of what we see today traces back to the resulting organizations.
I have never lost a credit card or had one stolen.
I have had charges refused and my card frozen multiple times, often when traveling to countries where dealing with these problems is quite difficult. These rules have tradeoffs.
In addition, credit card companies are money making enterprises. If you don't pay the cost when you personally lose a card then all the credit card company's customers pay the cost. Do not imagine it is paid by shareholders.
What I have never understood is why US cards don't use PINs. Virtually every other country requires them.
"In addition, credit card companies are money making enterprises. If you don't pay the cost when you personally lose a card then all the credit card company's customers pay the cost. Do not imagine it is paid by shareholders."
------------------
This is the kind of shibboleth that would be repeated by the current congress to convince people that we must do away with the scourge of the communist $50 rule.
You might think that forcing credit card companies to eat the cost of fraud/theft actually creates a huge incentive for them to reduce fraud/theft...but no, as the faith based automatons remind us, that is socialist thinking and not how the magic free market fairy works. Freedom!!! requires us to remove these costs and risks from the shoulders of our valiant credit card companies.
+1
It certainly does create incentives to reduce fraud / theft. That has ended up with me stuck in places like Kiev (pre-war) without a functioning credit card. This is my point about downsides and tradeoffs.
You forgetting or refusing to notify your card that you were travelling isnt really much of a downside/tradeoff. But I get that we are making a faith based argument here and real world examples are hard to come up with.
Whatever 'liberals' are for, he again'. Look the replies to Kevin's posts on Gen IV reactors as one of the latest examples in a long line of cognitive abuses.
So you think the company, the only one who can invest to make sure charges aren't fraudulent, should instead just bill customers fraudulent charges?
Like, that seems a failure of fiduciary duty.
This from the commenter who was touting that a driver should be able to kill a pedestrian who confronted him for driving his car into a crowded crosswalk?
That tracks, I guess.
"If you don't pay the cost when you personally lose a card then all the credit card company's customers pay the cost. "
To state the obvious: "we" pay for everything. Shareholders and executive types just collect. However, this is where everyone's favorite myth, the free market, comes in. There are enough credit card companies offering various rates, etc. Yes, likely that on average we pay a little more. I take that as an insurance for not being stuck with a 15K bill.
To flip your second point, if credit card companies don't care about being stuck with the bill, then they will pay no attention to fraud.
It sounds like you didn't make the proper preparations, issues with using credit cards like that have been around for a long time. Sympathy if you didn't have the faculty to do so, or if there were informational or access barriers to doing so.
I certainly wouldn't equate the pros/cons of someone either refusing or not having the capability at the time to prepare for an already existing regulatory landscape with the protections provided to those who are defrauded by bad actors under that same landscape.
"...Your bank has to eat the rest."
Does the bank bear the loss or is it the merchant that accepted the card?
Anyway I expect a similar law would pass easily today if for example some technical defect was found with the current law rendering it invalid.
Since merchants - even small ones - continue to accept credit cards, I’m assuming they aren’t stuck with eating the cost of every fraudulent use. Especially now that you tap your card on a reader - how exactly is the merchant supposed to “compare signatures” or “check the card for signs of manipulation” if they never actually see the card themselves?
Also:
“Anyway I expect a similar law would pass easily today…”
Hahahahaha! Without asshats like Cruz - who recently was defending the rights of airlines to keep your money even if they dick around with your flight details so much that you can’t take the flight - trying to sabotage it? Or the entire Republican Party actively trying to get rid of the one agency, the CFPB, that might propose such a rule today? Your Pollyanna faith in Congress diligently working to help regular people is amazing.
Credit card companies make money from transaction fees. They are more profitable if they don't have to carefully vet the transaction to determine if it is valid.
Making the customer responsible for ANY amount of loss, which was the result of third-party theft, is wrong.
However, legislators are very affordable.
At the time these laws were being written, I thought that putting limits on how much you can be held responsible for third party theft was a trade for letting the credit card companies charge 30% interest, when the Mafia charged only 10%.
However, I now see that all of this was just an additional way for the Finance sector to be a parasite on society.
"Mafia charged only 10%"
On the Soprano's, the standard interest rate or vigorish was about 2% per week for good customers, with Tony paying only 1.5% per week on a $200,000 loan, because he was the boss. That's 104% per year, assuming you pay on time and the "vig" was not added to the principle owed.
Finance sector can certainly be considered a parasite in some situations (high interest credit cards, payday loans, ect), but the world would come to a grinding stop if the availability of credit evaporated.
We have had our credit card information hacked more than once, probably by some employee of a vender, and fictious charges run up. In all cases, the bank's fraud unit alerted us and the card number cancelled.
Credit card companies and issuing banks are two different things.
The credit card companies (Visa, Mastercard, Discover) make money on transaction fees. The issuing bank makes money when the cardholder pays interest and pays late fees.
Just pay the card off each month and you will never know or care about the interest rate.
Of course I can. They just passed a $35 max for diabetes meds for government health insurance programs, passed the Consumer Financial Protection Board, and just a few years back Obamacare.
It's only if we THINK we can pass things that we can.
I believe the $35 insulin cap was just an executive order unilaterally issued by Biden or perhaps someone in his cabinet, under the (usually obscure and dormant) clauses in other laws allowing Medicare to negotiate for drug prices that somehow never actually happened until Joe came across it a few years ago. I don’t know that it was an actual law that otherwise politically gridlocked Congress passed. And even if it was a law, it’s not one that creates actual costs to business - insulin is still profitable at $35, whereas eating the cost of charges made over $50 is borne by someone, either the merchant or the bank.
Meanwhile, CFPB and Obamacare required filibuster-proof Democratic trifectas to ram through. We only get those once a generation or so.
The insulin price cap was part of the Inflation Reduction Act. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/02/fact-sheet-president-bidens-cap-on-the-cost-of-insulin-could-benefit-millions-of-americans-in-all-50-states/
After 1974, credit card companies developed elaborate software to check your card for irregularities so credit card fraud is rare. Banks didn't do squat and debit card fraud is common.
It certainly could not pass. The Donor Class, and very likely Trump (who would sympathize anyway and can always be bought off) would oppose it. The Crazy Caucus would shriek that it's all a commie plot to undermine the Most Holy And Free Market and as usual that the Democrats are just trying to give all your money to Inner City types and Immigrants (works for all issues no matter what). The major papers would run endless chin-scratching "analyses" that would focus entirely on wild speculations and spend no time at all on the obvious benefits (those wouldn't be "news," you see). And the whole thing would end up bottled up in some wingnut-run House committee and never see the light of day.
Depends. IIRC, the credit card issuers were on board with this.
Recall that 50 years ago, credit card purchases were captured by imprinting on carbon paper and settlement was a multi-month process. Someone could steal your card and run up a multiple of your limit before anyone noticed.
And if the big banks had reason to want something like that again, I'm pretty sure they'd get it.
Democrats need to chill the fuck out. Yes, things are different, yes things are worse, yes Stumpy is a threat, yes systemic pressures are forcing things in a bad direction. It has happened before, it'll happen again. Grow some fucking non-gendered courage organs.
In 1979/1980, I worked as a professional distributor of refined petroleum products. The service station also serviced cars; customers would come in to pick up their cars and settle their bills. I forget whether we accepted every credit card, or just the gasoline brand's. Anyway, if the billed amount was over some limit, we had to call into a center, read the number, tell them the amount of the bill, and get a code to write on the credit slip.
So for a stolen card to run up a big bill, it would have to be through a long series of smaller transactions. Otherwise it would get flagged and destroyed. I never had a card declined.
>> IIRC, the credit card issuers were on board with this.<<
Can’t say I know the history, but I sincerely doubt this. If that were true, then they would have done it without government intervention as a selling feature (“and if you use x credit card you don’t have to worry about losing your card”) or as an opportunity for “insurance” sales (buy our loss insurance”).
Car manufacturers had to be dragged into providing air bags but it turned out to be a selling point for them when they were forced to by law.
If GOP wins WH and Congress, "fixing" that will be high on the "new sheriff in town" list
Is the difference about Congress then and now or the Republican Party then and now?
Also in 1974, Republicans in the Senate decided it was time for a president of their own party to resign or face impeachment—a president who had not been convicted of 34 felonies, who had not been indicted on dozens of charges for attempting to overturn an election, who had not been found liable for sexual assault, who had not boasted about grabbing women by the pussy, who had not played lapdog to a Russian autocrat, who had not threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO, who had not called neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates “good people,” who had not incited an angry mob to violently attack Congress, who had not spewed lies and conspiracy theories and other mad ramblings at such alarming rate it was difficult to keep up.
If you told the Republicans of 1974 where their party’s politics was headed, they would simply not be capable of believing you.
We will never have another productive congress. Unless it's for the worse.
I'm not sure why anyone who identifies as a progressive / liberal / democrat etc. has any confidence in the future being anything other than bad. The poor will become worse off. The migrants will not have a better life. The rich and well connected will loot and pillage to their hearts content with no accountability and no shame at all. Life is good! And this is as good as it gets.
The political culture will undermine the relative prosperity we have today. Climate change will be unstoppable etc. Enjoy the time you have. In 5-6 months it will all be over. Good luck!
This would explain why fewer people are having children anymore. If you actually believe the future will be worse than today no matter what you or other people do, why would you want to bring new people into your prison?
Of course, for those of us with no means to escape America - it’s really hard to emigrate to a comparable standard of living country without lots of money - and no means to escape planet earth… what else are already-born people supposed to do? Mope about the future likely being worse than today? Or simply pretend like it won’t necessarily be worse than today? I don’t deny your logic here but I do question its utility - it’s like you work for Soylent Green or live in Logan’s Run or something.
Beyond that, congratulations for not being a total troll today, Justin.
5 stages of grief: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
I'm at acceptance. You'll get there. Or, in a few years, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing I was wrong. That'd be nice!
Yup good times are coming . . .
unless you're Muslim, Mexican, Gay, Poor or ProChoice
and unlike 1016, if GOP gets the gov trifecta this November
By the time the country wakes up to who they elected
election counting Controls will have been "amended"
to where we can never vote them out
Autocracy here we come
be absolutely THRILLED to be wrong about November
Yeah, unlike 1016 when King Cnut defeated Æthelred the Unready.
Or did you mean 2016? 😛
Never is a long time. I will never be able to know that you're right but one of these days, possibly as early as November, I may be able to confirm that you're wrong.
Meanwhile, like the dog that didn’t bark, the real mystery here is: how much could Kevin have lost recently if this law didn’t exist? Cause I assume that’s what brought this law to his attention: someone ran up a bunch of charges on one or more of his card recently.
The number of people who lobby for the credit industry fills a phone book, especially ex-members of Congress.
Good Point ! K-St certainly had / has the clout, so I'm surprised the best congress money can buy didn't "fix" that in 2017
If that law didn't already exist, Congress wouldn't have to pass it. CFPB could just make a rule.
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