I have been entangled, for the last few years, with Chase Credit Cards.
I started my first card, though, not with them. I actually can't remember what the bank was, but I think it was a Providian Visa.
Johnny Lick's Foggiest Memories no 1:
I have been entangled, for the last few years, with Chase Credit Cards.
I started my first card, though, not with them. I actually can't remember what the bank was, but I think it was a Providian Visa. The other, a Chase Mastercard, started as a shared card with my mother. When I was first out of college, she helped me by paying for groceries and gas. A few years ago I took that card over, and slowly started acquiring debt.
When first using my cards, I started with the basics like food and gas, and paid off every month. I was always shocked by how low my minimum payment was, usually $15. That made it tempting to start putting a few restaurant meals on the card, or a beer at the bar. I was working, so I was covered. If the balance was too high, I might let a few dollars roll over, and I was still amazed at the low minimum payment, usually only a dollar or two more.
All that stuff is a little foggy in my memory, because it was nothing special. But a very clear memory is one month, when the minimum payment was in the seventies and very soon the hundreds. And working odd jobs for around ten bucks an hour, I worked myself into a hole.
I remember receiving frequent credit card offers in the mail. They offered low rates on balance transfers. I chose to push my debt to different cards, overall accruing more debt while still trying to keep a good record with Chase.
Then I went back to school. To pay for it, I took out all the student loans I could. Two Stafford Loans and a third, a Student Loan Corporation (CitiBank) loan. I used much of the third loan to pay my cards down, and went back to accruing rolling balances. I used still more of the loans to pay monthly minimums for a few years. I was in good standing with Chase.
Then one day it was different. Everything felt the same, but something had changed.
JL
So, I was swimming around Princeton.edu and stumbled on this:
(n) adhesion contract, contract of adhesion (a contract that heavily restricts one party while leaving the other free (as some standard form printed contracts); implies inequality in bargaining power).
Then I went snorkeling in the Answers.com Law Encyclopedia, and I found this. But I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know what it means:
There is nothing unenforceable or even wrong about adhesion contracts. In fact, most businesses would never conclude their volume of transactions if it were necessary to negotiate all the terms of every consumer credit contract. Insurance contracts and residential leases are other kinds of adhesion contracts. This does not mean, however, that all adhesion contracts are valid. Many adhesion contracts are unconscionable; they are so unfair to the weaker party that a court will refuse to enforce them. An example would be severe penalty provisions for failure to pay loan installments promptly that are physically hidden by small print located in the middle of an obscure paragraph of a lengthy loan agreement. In such a case a court can find that there is no meeting of the minds of the parties to the contract and that the weaker party has not accepted the terms of the contract.