Pay You Damn, Fool, Pay!!!

American Scofflaw

Re: "Lines of credit become costlier; TD imposes inactivity fee besides rate hike," Jan. 29, 2009.

Just when you think you've heard it all, a Canadian bank has the audacity to introduce a $35 fee for not loaning you money. Since TD's interest rate for their line of credit is prime plus 4.4 per cent, or 7.4 per cent at the moment, it is cheaper for customers to borrow up to $470 than to not borrow at all.

The inactivity fee is justified by saying there is a cost to maintain the account. Ingenious. I'm thinking other merchants should follow suit. The weeks I happen to be out of town, and don't buy groceries, Safeway should invoice me for not buying anything, because there is certainly a cost to truck in the food and maintain the store.

If I go a couple extra weeks without a haircut, the barber could bill me $5. Just because his chair is empty doesn't mean there's no cost to maintain it. And never mind the city raising its parking rates. Why not send people who don't park a bill?

The longer you don't park, the more you'd have to pay--we all know infrastructure is expensive. Eventually, we can get to a point of forced consumerism. To save money, you will have to spend it. At this point, we may as well change the name of our beloved USA to Oxymoronia