HappySqurriel said:
My grandfather who has a grade 4 education fully understands the terms of the financial contracts he signed, so I think that any claim about needing a law degree or finance degree to understand the contracts is simply dramatic. With that said, I wasn't (necessarily) suggesting that the education should be provided by the government because there are already several organizations (at least in Canada) which offer low cost or free basic financial and legal advice to people. On top of that, some of the biggest holes in the secondary education system is the lack of education provided about managing personal finance and the lack of a basic education in the legal system ... We don't accept it as an excuse when someone says that they didn't read or understand their sexual harrassment policy at work, so why should we accept it as an excuse when someone says that they didn't read or understand a financial contract they entered into?
Beyond that, a question I have is why are these credit card contracts "Bad business practices"? Over several decades of creating these contracts the wording has been carefully created and refined (after decades of lawsuits) to ensure that the company can offer credit to a vast array of clients, each with very different credit ratings, and produce a reasonable profit without taking on too high of a risk. Forcing them to change the contract for political reasons could result in the company going out of business due to too high of risk exposure with too low of a return, or (more likely) everyone paying higher interest rates because of increased risk the company is undertaking. |
I think most people understand terms and conditions of credit cards, and they tend to be trustworthy anyways, but invididual contracts between two people or between a company and a person are ones that can be unfair to the less educated party. I'm from a rural mining area so I know of several examples of land owners agreeing to unfavorable contracts with mining companies.
