Letter to the Editor — Credit card woes

If only to forearm credit card holders, I have to share my own sad experience with the reading public and forewarn them of the pitfalls of this so-called plastic money. While being a credit cardholder may have its advantages, the disadvantages far more outweighs its benefits.

It was my late wife who gave me my first credit card for which she then applied on my behalf as an extension to her own. Of course, the plastic money came in handy because of the nature of my job that, more often than not, would take me on out-of-town trips.

As was her wont then, it was also my late wife (God bless her soul!) who paid the monthly bills of all the essentials like water and electric consumption, as well as those of our credit cards. When I was legally retrenched from government service in 2001, I then paid fully the balance of our credit cards out of my separation pay.

My financial woes started when my wife died and our office relocated to a place outside of the commercial district. Not really being also too meticulous about the fine print in the application forms for credit cards and the sucker that I was, I got so easily enticed into becoming a member of not just one, not only two but became a multiple credit card-holder.

And probably due to my wife's creditworthiness as a borrower and perhaps, because I fully settled our accounts after my retirement, one bank hiked my credit limit to a whooping P250,000. It was then that I begun to feel some cash flow problems and realized that my savings into the bank were getting slowly depleted and even drained empty.

Aside from being slapped highly onerous and oppressively confiscatory and arbitrary interest rates and penalties by the banks, I was irretrievably pushed to bankruptcy. What's even more deplorable is when I asked for some sort of a relief, I am told to pay first some minimum amount before I am granted amnesty.

Already at the mercy of the banks, why, for heaven's sake, can't I even ask them to stop the bleeding! They keep imposing their penalties and surcharges, not to mention their interest charges, ad infinitum even if I had long ceased and desisted from using my cards!

And come to think of it, if all my payments were taken into account I have already liquidated the principal and am now only paying the interests which keep compounding and ballooning!

So, will Congress please revisit the usury law and restore it if only for the sake of many other countless Filipinos who are in the same predicament as I am and regulate this highly unjust, cruel and oppressive practice of banks in this brisk business of giving out credit cards?

(Sgd.) Benjamin R. Ypil

Mabolo, Cebu City