The Conference Coach™

Carolyn Bradfield

One of the trends that has been ushered in with the new administration in Washington is the attempt to reign in our financial institutions such as banks and credit cards.  Shortly, a credit card reform act will take affect that attempts to prevent the credit card companies from taking advantage of their clients.  Because we have a number of young people working for Copper Conferencing, I’ve become materially interested in how they manage their credit and whether they are being taken advantage of.

Historically, credit card companies gave a very small window of time to pay bills (14 days) and when you missed that window, they would sock you with penalties and interest.  To make life more interesting, they would change the date they sent the bill and change your payment date so it was different every month.  For those of us who have online bill pay, there was a high potential to miss a payment, no matter what our intentions were to pay on time.

Even if your track record with one credit card company is perfect, if you missed or were late on payments with any other credit card companies, they would raise your rate arbitrarily.  Rates could go up at any time with the notice in the fine print and no time to find another credit card company with more reasonable rates.  The bottom line is that credit card companies (much like some of our larger conferencing competitors) are motivated to improve their revenue with fees and penalties that only show up in the fine print.

Watch your credit card statement in the interim before the bill goes into effect in March.  Many of these companies are preemptively raising rates and according to Good Morning America’s Mellody Hobson, some as high as a 79% increase!

I also want to take the time to call out a key offender of consumer abuse, Rooms to Go, a nationwide furniture retailer that sells primarily on nothing down, no interest and no payments for years at a time.  One of our young staff members got sucked into that promise, bought a bedroom suite (paying way too much) and enjoyed no payments for 18 months.  When payments finally happened, the interest rate was 25%.  By the time he pays this off, he could have also bought a living room, kitchen and dining room full of furniture!

As part of the reform initiated by Congress, companies will no longer be allowed to offer deals where no payments are made during the interest free grace period.  Here’s my advice to all of you as consumers and especially to our young folks at Copper:

1. Look at your credit card statements right now.  If the interest rate went way up, look around for another company to transfer your balance to.
2. If you are getting a tax refund, make the maximum payment possible to the credit card or account with the highest interest rate.  There’s no point hoarding money in your account when someone is charging you 25%!
3. Never enter a deal where you don’t plan to make regular payments on something you buy, even if there is some type of “grace” period.  There’s always a catch.
4. Read the fine print and your statements from the credit card companies.  They’ll find a way to ratchet up their fees, no matter what the reform bill states.

Also for you conferencing customers out there, take the same advice.  Read your invoice.  Look at the fees and charges that don’t relate to the cost of the call.  Make sure the company is doing what they committed to.  I ran a blog last year called the “InterCall Diaries” that pointed out fees, minimums, cost of receiving an invoice, and surcharges.  If you are an InterCall customer, you should be reading that invoice.  Then you should call Copper when you find out that they are no different than one of these credit card companies or Rooms to Go!

Carolyn Bradfield is the CEO of Copper Conferencing, a leading provider or audio and web conferencing and wrap-around services to enhance customer experience. To learn more about Copper Conferencing, visit www.copperconferencing.com.