Credit card companies are failing to care about consumers

February 8, 2007

You would think with all of the bad debt within the UK today, that credit companies would start being a little bit stricter with their credit cards. However, it seems that creditors simply do not care about their consumers as they constantly fail to check people’s credit records when they apply for a credit card.

This means that basically credit cards are available for everybody no matter what their credit history. It also means that bad debt is only set to increase. So, whilst many people may think that it is a great idea to get credit even when they have a poor credit history, really it can make things even worse.

It is thought that only one person out of ten who apply for a credit card, are asked for proof of income. Obviously proof of income should be a main question which is asked, as it shows whether you are working and whether you can in fact pay the debt off a credit card when you use it. More staggering figures show that 96% of people applying for a credit card do not need to provide information about their monthly outgoings.

Considering that most people who get a credit card are given a limit of roughly 14% of an average salary, checking backgrounds should be a high priority. People could end up in potentially thousands of pounds worth of debt all thanks to creditors not doing their job properly.

There have been changes made to the banking code over the past year in order to try and tighten up credit card lending. However, it does not seem to have made much difference, so it seems that further laws are going to have to be altered in order for things to properly change.

Overall whilst people with bad credit do sometimes still need credit cards, the laws do need to be changed so that creditors are a little stricter.