Speak now or forever pay huge fees

All comments will be made available to the public, so don't include account numbers or other private financial information. You're also not obligated to include identifiers such as your e-mail or physical address.

• Talk back: Would a crackdown on credit card practices help you?

But do let the Fed know how you feel about the proposed changes, and include your own story of how you've been gouged, if appropriate. The stories you recount in e-mails to MSN Money are instructive and moving. Enough of them aimed at the Fed could tip the balance.

Once you act, though, you shouldn't rest on your laurels. Because even if the Fed's proposals find their way into regulations, it's still not enough because:

Regulations don't have the force of law. Regulations can be changed or modified a lot more easily than laws can. Getting laws passed takes a lot of effort, and undoing them takes even more.

So we also need some legislation that outlaws the worst practices. The best bill is Rep. Carolyn Maloney's Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights (H.R. 5244), which I wrote about in "It's time for a credit card revolution" and which has more than 100 co-sponsors.

Right now, though, legislation to curb credit card lenders and banks is treading water in advance of the November election. Maloney's bill hasn't yet gotten a vote in the House; even if approved, it's unclear whether the Senate could act (or even tie its own shoes right now, for that matter).

So we need to keep the heat on. If you haven't already, e-mail your congressional representative and let him or her know you want reform.

The bad guys will always come up with something new. Rather than just playing "Whac-a-Mole" with specific fees and unfair practices -- banning one behavior only to have banks invent something worse -- author Sullivan would like to see regulators get serious about protecting consumers.

"The Fed, the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) and the other banking regulators need to show that they're going to take an active role in preventing companies from misleading consumers and engaging in behaviors that are just clearly out of the bounds of fairness," Sullivan said. If regulators took their roles as consumer protectors seriously enough, he said, banks eventually would "stop inventing new unfair tactics."

So when you contact regulators and lawmakers, let them know you want more than a change in rules. You want a change in attitude, to one that considers consumers as well as profits and that makes financial institutions play fair.

Find your lawmaker in the Write Your Representative directory. Mention H.R. 5244 in your message. The sample below is a good start, but feel free to add your own frustrations. And don't forget to sign.

Please support H.R. 5244, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. Consumers' rights need to be protected, and credit card issuers' worst practices should be banned. Thank you.

Liz Pulliam Weston's latest book, "Easy Money: How to Simplify Your Finances and Get What You Want Out of Life," is now available. Columns by Weston, the Web's most-read personal-finance writer and winner of the 2007 Clarion Award for online journalism, appear every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions on the Your Money message board.

Published July 24, 2008

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