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ACORN turns up the heat on Money Mart
On Friday, members of ACORN, Money Mart customers who have been ripped off, and allies from labor and other community groups protested at Money Mart stores in more than 30 cities across the U.S. and Canada, including in San Francisco where 40 members picketed in front of the Money Mart store at Seventh and Market Street.
ACORN accuses Money Mart of preying on poor people by charging them high fees to cash checks and 400 percent interest rates for short term loans. “I received a loan from Money Mart for $670, paid back $1,200 and now they say I still owe $300,” said Money Mart victim Shauna Hardeman.
“Money Mart’s ads say ‘Need Cash? Don’t Stress. With a Payday Loan from Money Mart, you’ve got one less thing to worry about.’ But we’re no fools. We know that these loans are easy to get, but hard to pay back. Money Mart wants us to be in debt to them for the rest of our lives,” said ACORN member Paulette Chappill-Otten.
Chanting “Predatory Lender, Criminal Offender!” and holding signs that said “Hey Money Mart, Stop Ripping off Poor People,” 40 ACORN members were joined by allies from the Service Employees International Union, the Office Professional Employees International Union, the Postal Workers Union, UNITE HERE Local 2, the San Francisco Labor Council, Rainforest Action Network, the Grey Panthers and the Community Housing Partnership.
The typical interest rate on a payday loan from Money Mart is 456 percent. While Money Mart says payday loans help people in a one-time emergency, ACORN charges that payday loans are set up so people can’t pay them back and so are forced to repeatedly renew the loans and pay additional interest.
A $300 payday loan from Money Mart costs $352.50. If after two weeks the customer can’t pay the full amount, they pay the $52.50 finance charge and Money Mart rolls the loan over for two more weeks. If, as in many cases, this continues for three months, the customer will have paid Money Mart $341 in interest and still owe the entire $352.50 loan amount.
Last month, ACORN presented Money Mart with a “Loan Shark of the Year” Award for “gouging customers through predatory payday lending, criminal check-cashing fees and rip-off refund loans.”
ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, with over 175,000 member families organized into 850 neighborhood chapters in 75 cities across the country. Visit http://www.acorn.org.
http://sfbayview.com/040506/loanshark040506.shtml
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We also really need to start targeting the regular banks as well.
Bank of America and Wells Fargo can be downright predatory. They can pose such a risk to poor people of siphoning off big chunks of their paycheck via penalties for low balance, or practices of deducting check withdrawals first before entering deposits, that it can be *rational* for poor people to just keep their money in a shoebox and use a Moneymart for writing a rent check and cashing a paycheck once a month. This is pretty sad. I have had two fully employed housemates who didn't keep bank accounts, and distrust of banks is widespread among african americans *for good reason*.
Let's not even get into the fact that those 'free checking' accounts at Washington Mutual, which has a strategy of attracting low-income bank account holders so they can make income via penalties, plus standard savings accounts at Citibank, pay zero interest or below 1% interest.
The official rate of inflation is around 3.5% during this past year, and as we all realize, the government's CPI underestimates true price inflation in California because it doesn't take into account housing, energy, and health insurance costs, which consume the bulk of the family budget. So people's money in regular bank accounts is depreciating as it sits there. It would be better for people to buy items that don't depreciate that could be sold in five years, rather than put it in a regular bank account.
Bank of America and Wells Fargo can be downright predatory. They can pose such a risk to poor people of siphoning off big chunks of their paycheck via penalties for low balance, or practices of deducting check withdrawals first before entering deposits, that it can be *rational* for poor people to just keep their money in a shoebox and use a Moneymart for writing a rent check and cashing a paycheck once a month. This is pretty sad. I have had two fully employed housemates who didn't keep bank accounts, and distrust of banks is widespread among african americans *for good reason*.
Let's not even get into the fact that those 'free checking' accounts at Washington Mutual, which has a strategy of attracting low-income bank account holders so they can make income via penalties, plus standard savings accounts at Citibank, pay zero interest or below 1% interest.
The official rate of inflation is around 3.5% during this past year, and as we all realize, the government's CPI underestimates true price inflation in California because it doesn't take into account housing, energy, and health insurance costs, which consume the bulk of the family budget. So people's money in regular bank accounts is depreciating as it sits there. It would be better for people to buy items that don't depreciate that could be sold in five years, rather than put it in a regular bank account.
Here is a posting on craigslist about Bank of America:
Bank of America worst bank ever? < pothole > 04/06 07:55:38
My girlfriend and I moved to the DC area last May and both opened accounts at BofA. Since then, we've been wrongly nickel and dimed constantly. We've been charged fees we were explicitly told would not be charged, we haven't been given money that we were supposed to receive for recommending a new customer (will never do that again). They've screwed up literally everything we've asked of them.
My girlfriend tried to close her savings account, and each time she would get her statement it would show a negative balance for the account which would supposed to be closed. Finally this week she thought she'd resolved the problem, but when she checked her accounts last night it turned out that they had closed her checking account as well, which had thousands of dollars in it. Apparently the money just vanished into thin air, and now it's our responsibility to figure out what happened to it.
After this happened, I searched the internet and quickly found tons of similarly horrifying and stupifying accounts of BofA practices. We were going to wait until we moved in May to switch banks, but needless to say we'll now be transfering all of our money to a new bank/credit union the instant we get this whole mess straightened out. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this? Personally I find BofA's incompetence/negligence mind-boggling and believe their actions may constitute fraud.
Bank of America worst bank ever? < pothole > 04/06 07:55:38
My girlfriend and I moved to the DC area last May and both opened accounts at BofA. Since then, we've been wrongly nickel and dimed constantly. We've been charged fees we were explicitly told would not be charged, we haven't been given money that we were supposed to receive for recommending a new customer (will never do that again). They've screwed up literally everything we've asked of them.
My girlfriend tried to close her savings account, and each time she would get her statement it would show a negative balance for the account which would supposed to be closed. Finally this week she thought she'd resolved the problem, but when she checked her accounts last night it turned out that they had closed her checking account as well, which had thousands of dollars in it. Apparently the money just vanished into thin air, and now it's our responsibility to figure out what happened to it.
After this happened, I searched the internet and quickly found tons of similarly horrifying and stupifying accounts of BofA practices. We were going to wait until we moved in May to switch banks, but needless to say we'll now be transfering all of our money to a new bank/credit union the instant we get this whole mess straightened out. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this? Personally I find BofA's incompetence/negligence mind-boggling and believe their actions may constitute fraud.
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