As long as other banks continue to rip their customers off by charging ridiculous international transaction fees, I'll keep using my Capitol One card.

I saw a show about microcredit given to women in poor countries, and it was like that: visits to their home, interviews with their neighbors, ongoing meetings where the borrower had to confess her flaws, the whole thing.

Worried about the banks? We should be far more concerned about the intrusion the IRS and HHS will have in our lives under Obamacare.

I wasn't aware that knocking on someone's door requires any special rights.

I'm not sure how this changes anything. An unscheduled personal visit won't count a as official communication per FRB rules.
FTC rules will still regulate how they are supposed to contact you for debt collection. I don't think you can sign those rights away.

This isn't new. Credit card banks have always reserved the right to contact you with "special offers", and even to allow their "partners" to do so. We are among the unfortunates who still have a land line, and it rings all the fucking time with a "partner" offer that Do Not Call can't stop. And yes, they use false Caller ID lines all the freaking time. There's a special circle in hell for telemarketers, "legitimate" or otherwise.

@3: I'm more worried about Benghazi myself.

@7 Never forget!

@7: Bhengazi was my generation's 9/11

@6,

Unless things have really changed since I pretty much stopped using my phone (I don't see telemarketing calls come in because the battery's dead 99 percent of the time), you can usually tell it's a telemarketing call if you don't recognize the area code. And not just in the sense that the area code isn't 206; if the area code comes from some shithole part of a state (Inland Empire, for example), it's a telemarketer.

What @4 said.

They've got the right to knock on my door and I've got the right to ignore them. Same as it ever was.

@9: Obama lied, people died!

I like how everyone here is ignoring the part where they are coming to your workplace as well.

Risks are not minimized. They are transferred. The state may or may not be involved.

Capital One can honestly claim that they're not going to come to your house or work to collect on debt. Capital One doesn't do collections. That part of the balance sheet is sold to collections agencies, who are not bound by any laws or recognized forms of human decency.

Seven years on, and I still get collections calls for the person who previously had the number and apparently died leaving a mountain of medical bills.

Spoof calling seriously pisses me off