Travis Plunkett Quotations

We're going to see people in a debtor's prison without walls, ... They'll essentially slip through the safety net, hit the ground and then sink into an underground economy.

shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get bankruptcy relief.

We support credit counseling, especially if it's delivered early, and this is not early intervention. This is late intervention at the point where people have decided that bankruptcy is the only way for them. We just wonder whether this kind of late intervention will be helpful to too many people.

I think you're going to see a serious effort to include this provision either as a standalone bill or as relief legislation.

I think the credit-card industry is reaching a tipping point,

It is possible some could read this and say, 'they're encouraging me to pay late,' ... Paying late is never a good deal.

People are just fed up with the approach that the large credit-card issuers have taken over the past five years. They're fed up with an increasing number of traps and tricks. They're tired of being hit with a fee every time they blink.

Rent is often the largest chunk of a family's monthly budget. So the concern would be that these families would be tempted to use money they don't have by putting it on plastic.

Most issuers waited until at least mid-2005 or later. Credit-card companies should have started implementing this guidance a long time ago. They should have done so very gradually ... That hasn't happened. But we haven't been flooded with complaints, either.

What we have right now is exceedingly weak. It's virtually worthless.

What we have pointed out is that we often hear promises of greater resources devoted to R&D (as a result of a merger), but there is absolutely no proof that in the mergers over the last three to five years that that has occurred.

We don't want this credit counseling requirement to be yet another hurdle that consumers who really need bankruptcy relief have to jump over to get it,

What the credit bureaus are most interested in is gaining market share in the increasingly lucrative market for credit scores.

Credit card lenders are luring consumers onto a minimum-payment treadmill. Consumers don't have the information they need to get off of it.

Some people prefer telephone counseling. Some people prefer in-person counseling.

Once you're caught in that, you're often stuck,

Bankruptcy is an important safety net that families hit by unforeseen circumstances depend upon. The federal government should be bending over backwards to help Katrina's victims get back on their feet, not throwing up new barriers to bankruptcy.

Your credit report is your passport to your essential financial information. Increasingly, what's in your credit report determines whether you'll get credit and how much you'll pay for it.

They've done nothing, absolutely nothing. The credit card industry has an enormous amount of power in Washington. They bottle these bills up.

It's extremely lucrative for the insurers, much more so than other types of insurance.

It's kind of like the wild west out there.

The bill simply doesn't balance responsibility between families in debt trouble and the creditors whose practices have contributed to the rise in bankruptcies.

Taking on debt to accumulate savings is an obvious contradiction. It seems more like a clever marketing ploy than a legitimate method for increasing savings.

They'll never get a fresh start, ... And over the long haul, this can have a significant impact on the economy, if a large number of people can't get back to being ordinary consumers.

If your credit card bills are completely out of control and far beyond your ability to afford them, then the relatively minor breaks that credit card companies offer to people in credit counseling may not provide enough breathing room for some people to afford a three- to five-year debt-management plan.

By almost every measure, consumers are paying far too much for credit insurance. The research shows very clearly that credit insurance is a very bad value.

For some people, it's going to be not much of a change at all.

The golden rule is, Don't wait too long. Talk to them as soon as possible. Be very clear on what the source of the financial trouble is and tell them you want to work it out.

The law has a one-size-fits-all approach, ... It treats people who have been hit by hurricanes in the same fashion as people who have ended up in bankruptcy from gambling or overspending or misusing the credit they were given.