The constant stream of free beads, T-shirts, foam fingers and flying discs pouring in from credit card companies will be absent from the Hokie football experience this fall.
The credit card representatives who flock to many campus sporting events offering students the chance to support their school by opening up an college affinity credit card are now banned by federal law.
"We never allowed an organizations to solicit on campus," said university spokesman Larry Hincker. "They always had to work in concert with one of our organizations such as an alumni group."
President Barack Obama signed the Credit Cardholder's Bill of Rights Act of 2009 into law on May 22 as an amendment to the Truth in Lending Act that established fair and transparent practices relating to the extension of credit under an open-end consumer credit plan.
Credit cards were often advertised to students around football games.
Affinity credit cards allow students an opportunity to support their school, even by swiping their credit cards at the grocery store. These cards offer to donate a portion of the purchases on the card to the institution, offer discounted terms to the consumer and sport the logos of the institution on the card.The new bill formally defines these accounts as "a credit card issued by a credit card issuer under an open end consumer credit plan in conjunction with an agreement between the user and an institution of higher education, or an alumni organization or foundation."
Virginia Tech Alumni Association currently holds a contract with JPMorgan Chase, according to Vice President for Alumni Relations Tom Tillar.
Chase, however, has ended their affinity card plans in accordance with this new bill.
Tillar said the alumni association's contract with Chase prohibits him from disclosing the value of the agreement. Contracts at other universities range from $1 million to $20 million and give credit card companies access to alumni contact information, as well as the right to market to them.
Tillar said existing cards are not affected by Chase's change.
"If you hold a card right now it will still be good and will work, but they have stopped accepting new applications," Tillar said. "They are only keeping their Disney affinity cards because that is a global organization."
The bill has banned giving out free gifts to students as incentives and has prohibited credit card companies from providing credit cards to students under the age of 21 without consent from a parent or guardian.
Credit card companies are still allowed to market toward alumni with an established annual gross income.
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Oh I love Larry Hincker. He is quoted above as saying that cc companies were never allowed to solicit, that they were always working in concert organizations such as an alumni group. Sure Larry, technically perhaps that is true. Perhaps the agreements were specifically written to say that cc companies could only "solicit" if they were working in concert with some other group. In reality everyone knows that VT and/or alumni association, or some other group of adults agreed to sell to a company(ies) the right to be at the games reeling in the next generation of young slaves to debt. Lesson of the day: money makes the world go round.....gotta pay the mortgage :)
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One of the best classes to take (hands down) at VT is Family Financial Planning (with Ruth Lytton). If you can take it before you graduate it is the most useful class I have taken by far.
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