I just can't believe the tenor of the responses to this thread: it's all the fault of the card company WHO GAVE THEM THE MONEY IN THE FIRST PLACE?!
Reminds me of all those people in New Orleans complaining that their mortgage company demanded they start paying after 3 months' reprieve. These low income debtors had "sub standard" mortgages: i.e. they couldn't qualify for conventional mortgages. (Conventional mortgage companies, thru gov't insistence, allowed up to a year for people to avoid payments.) Sub-standard mortgage companies don't have the financial werewithal to delay payments. BUT THE POINT IS: those people wouldn't have HAD a mortgage (or their house) if not for the sub-standard market. They rolled the dice on a high interest loan and got burned.
Same with credit cards. If the companies were scrupulous in denying cards to people, how long before a class action suit arrives on their doorstep. As for the high rates, most everyone takes advantage of those 3%-for-six-months offers and, after six months, moves to an even lower offer of 0%. I did it last year when I needed an infusion of money into my business. I didn't pay a dime of interest on the $12,000 I borrowed for 8 months. (yes, I paid transfer fees of $150 which comes to under 2%). I took the time to analyze the many offers from different cards...and it was worth it. People who complain either haven't tended to their credit in the past or they don't take the time to shop all the offers.
I don't see that cr card companies have anything to apologize for. If you can't afford it, don't buy it. And, especially, don't rack up a balance on a high interest cr card. Better to face the music before the interest piles up. People make bad decisions when hit with a financial crisis. That isn't the fault of the company that lends them the money.
I think there are two separate dynamics at work here and many posters are focusing on one and ignoring the other.
One the one hand we have the individual who is getting way over their head or is simply mathematically incompetent (publik skools?) and does not understand that the interest is going to bury them (there are people who think if you just pay the minimum you are saving money, you know). Either way, the individual is responsible for the mess he is in and there is no moral way around it.
The other dynamic is the practices of the major card issuers. Their sole objective is to COLLECT AS MUCH INTEREST AS POSSIBLE with a goal to maximizing income. They are about as concerned about customer-suitability as a crack dealer is about his clients. Unlike the crack dealer, they have enormous influence with congress and are able to have major laws rewritten with a goal of increasing revenues, decreasing write-off accounts, and preventing customers from locking them out.
If any one of us, as an individual, pursued the tactics the card companies do with loans and credit, we would be viewed VERY poorly in society (i.e. a scumbag), but when a fortune 100 corporation pursues a business model which can only be described in human terms as either predatory or sociopathic or both, they get a pass. Bad lending practices results in higher default rates, and the major banks know it.