Americans clear across the country are under a significant amount of financial stress this holiday season, but that doesn’t mean one of the nation’s primary lenders has to abide by any particular code of ethics. With the Credit CARD Act set to go into place three months from now, it’s amazing the kind of predatory practices these banks will still employ.

Check out the move our CEO Ryan caught the other day.

bait and switch

2 years ago Ryan bought a sofa that he planned on paying off over a 60 month period at 0% APR financing.  Just the other day he got a standard piece of bank mail – a piece of mail that’s so often just thrown out- saying that they were jacking up his APR rate to 27.99% if he didn’t opt out of the change by January 31.

citi statement showing 0% - always check promotional dates!

It’s a classic bait-and-switch move, one that you’d expect from a less respected provider than Citi, but it looks like the norm these days. Banks are doing all they can to get ahead before stricter policies go into effect in February.

Fortunately he caught the change before it started, but we’re  betting there will be a fair amount of people who overlook letters of this sort and end up being subjected to higher interest rates in a couple of months because they didn’t take the time to read over the mail sent from their bank. Be on the lookout, folks!