I have a credit card with WaMu, can I still use it?

[redstate_democrat]

It has a zero balance, but ya never know. It's one of my emergency cards. If Wamu files bankruptcy, what happens to it?

[samuraiguppy]

1. absolutely.

If WaMu goes under another bank will "buy" their credit accounts.

I am a member of a board that specializes in credit related stuff (www.creditboards.com) and they think that Chase will take over these accounts. That would be a big step up for most of the people. Chase has their problems but still treats customers better than WaMu.

[Have2Win]

2. FAITH HEALER,MOOSE HUNTER< RAPTURE WAITING PALIN

Maverick??

Sees Russia from her house?

Has a tanning bed in her igloo

Had an affair with First Dudes business partner

Eloped because she was pregnant..preaches "abstinence" for the rest of the world, herself and daughter excluded.

Refuses to present herself for investigation re: Troopergate

Mayor of Podunk

Supposedly said "thanks but no thanks " to the bridge to nowhere, took the taxpayer money and built the "road to nowhere" (seen only by aerial view)

I am sure Cindy McCain must have found a new pal in Palin.. Cindy loves to shoot moose after a quick trip to Nordstroms for hunting gear

[Have2Win]

3. credit card debt

sure you can use it. what is the worse that can happen?
1) WaMu goes under, bought out by another bank
2) You don't pay for 60-90 days and they will make a deal with you for less than 40% of the total debt
3) get all you credit cards and unsecured debt.. get into a debt settlement program..pay off all your debt for 40-60% of what you owe.

[regnaD kciN]

5. "Debt settlement program"...?

Do you know a single one of these that isn't a scam?

As far as I know, there are two different types of debt-settlement programs:

1) You meet with them, they figure out how much you can pay, go to your creditors and try to work out a deal. If they manage to get the creditors to reduce your balance (not as easy as before the new bankruptcy law), you pay the agreed-upon monthly figure (including the cut for the debt-settlement company) to the company, which is then supposed to split it up and pass it along to your creditors. A few months later, you get a call from one of your creditors, demanding to know why your repayment is 60-90 days in arrears. You call the debt-settlement company, and find the phone has been disconnected. You realize that, for the past few months, they have just been pocketing your payment and not passing it along. Now they've vanished, undoubtedly to pop up soon under another name in another city, while you're out the payments you sent to them...and have a large outstanding debt to your creditors, plus a "default" status that guarantees you'll be paying 30% interest on everything until you get them all paid down.

2) You meet with them, they figure out how much you can pay, but they don't go to your creditors, just tell you to cancel all your cards and change your "billing address" to the debt-settlement company's address, then start paying the debt-settlement company and stop paying your creditors. Theoretically, they will deal with the collection attempts from your creditors while you build up your account balance at the debt-settlement company for a few years. Then, they'll go to your creditors and say "this is all you're going to get, so you might as well take it or leave it." If you're lucky, your creditors will take it, and even agree to the debt-settlement company's "request" to mark your account as "paid in full" and restore your credit rating to a pristine state. (If you believe that's going to happen, I've got a Bridge To Nowhere you might be interested in. Cheap.) Of course, if you're lucky, your creditors will have been stupid enough to simply restrict their collection attempts to the "new address" you gave them, and not look you up at your previous address, or find some other way of tracking you down. If you're not lucky, you'll have to spend years of enduring harassment from collection agencies while waiting for your balance to build up at the debt-settlement company so that they can finally contact your creditors with their "offer they can't refuse" (all the while hoping that they don't "take the money and run," as in example 1 above). Of course, this also assumes that you don't own enough to make it worthwhile for the creditors to simply sue you for repayment -- if you have a house or other real property, it will be far more likely for your creditors to simply decide to take you to court and get full repayment now (at the cost of you losing your house or whatever) rather than wait several years to get only half of that.

Pay attention to the ads for these companies. If there's a line about "not available in all states," or one that specifically mentions this service not being available in Arkansas, it's type number 2 -- because action by the state Attorney General there resulted in a settlement wherein the major debt-settlement companies agreed to stop doing business in that state.

And one other thing to keep in mind -- under current I.R.S. rules, forgiven debt counts as taxable income. So if, say, you find yourself $25,000 in debt, and you actually luck out and find a reliable and honest debt-settlement company that really goes to your creditors and gets them to agree up-front to cut your debt in half (like all the ads say)...you are suddenly going to find that the "forgiven" $12,500 counts as income, and you're going to have to come up with the taxes on that (several thousand dollars, depending on your tax bracket), in full, by next April 15th.

DISCLAIMER: Debt-settlement companies are not the same as "credit counseling agencies." The latter are sometimes for-profit, sometimes non-profit (and oftentimes funded by the credit-card companies themselves), and can sometimes evaluate your income and expenses, figure out how much you can reasonably pay to your creditors (since they are often funded by those creditors, look for them to reduce your expenses to the bone, and figure the highest-possible "minimum" amount for repayment), then go to your creditors and try to work out a "reasonable" repayment plan for you, which they will monitor. However, while these companies may be able to reduce your payments to the aforementioned minimum by getting your creditors to reduce your interest rate (after closing your accounts) or stretching out the length of the repayment process, I've never heard of any of them managing to get creditors to actually write-off any of the balance due itself. And it's not uncommmon for such counseling agencies, after looking over your finances, to simply tell you they can't help you, and that your only reasonable option is to file for bankruptcy.

[mwooldri]

4. Depends.

If there's zero balance on it and WaMu goes belly-up and then you want to use it ... it's a crapshoot. Your best earlier example is NextCard... they (NextBank) failed in February 2002 but the cards were still active... but come June the FDIC shut everything down, made a deal with Merrick Bank to buy a good number of their cards, and some other banks offered a straightforward new account with a simple balance transfer offer. Merrick Bank is a bank that deals with high-risk credit so my guess was that people were able to get new accounts with them, albeit at not as favourable terms as they were with NextCard.

If WaMu is really bleeding red ink then the credit card shutdown may happen sooner rather than later, possibly even same day as the BK annoucement. It might be viewed that if you have a dormant account with a credit card company, and that CC company goes belly up, then you're no risk, but then you might be an asset for "future business" or you might be a "deadbeat" (meaning someone who isn't generating any revenue for the CC)... if you're viewed as a "deadbeat" then forget about that card, hope some other CC Co is taking applications and extending credit and hope your credit is good and your personal financial situation all around is good. I've been seeing CC lines getting slashed, not because a customer is getting into any financial difficulty but merely because the area they live in... their house prices are crashing... no equity in the home to possibly pay a cc debt... hence bigger perceived risk.

If you've got a balance, hurray! You owe someone some money somewhere. WaMu is already trying to sell off its assets... I had an accout with Providian, got bought by WaMu. I closed the account with a balance and slowly started paying it down. WaMu sold this loan portfolio to someone else, and now I'm paying them. They changed the terms and conditions (much higher minimum due, different due date) and the new companies' website sucks BIG time (their biggest feature on there is pay the bill otherwise it's extremely minimalist).

Disclaimer: I am a call center coach for a large CC company.

[Dreamer Tatum]

6. If you use a credit card, you have to pay the balance

The only reason anyone else would buy that account is because, legally, you still owe the money.

If you use the card, you are actually propping up the value of WaMu, and if you don't pay, your credit
will suffer.

Pretty simple.

[slackmaster]

7. No worries - Whoever buys that part of WaMu will send you another card before that one expires

You can count on it.