For anyone who has been caught up in Credit Card Hell there was a couple of consumer victories recently that may help ease the debt. Since the Democratic take over of Congress, Credit Card companies have been called before Senate hearing a couple of times and the results have been small victories for consumers with Credit Cards from at least two major Credit Card companies: Citi and Chase.

MSNBC’s Red Tape Chronicles reports:

In recent months, Chase and CitiGroup both have announced they will abandon what were clearly among the most egregious fee practices by credit card issuers. But look closely, and you’ll see a pattern.

In January, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., hosted a banking committee hearing on credit card fees. On the eve of that hearing, Chase announced it would discontinue two-cycle billing. That practice is so diabolical and complicated I can’t really explain it here. But suffice to say that the moment you don’t pay your bill in full, the card issuer will not only assess high interest rate charges on new purchases, it will actually reach one month into the past and charge interest on past purchases too. Instead of being embarrassed during the hearing by this practice, Chase was able to piously say, “We don’t do that any more.”

This week, card issuers were again hauled before the Senate, this time in front of an investigative subcommittee. Critics were licking their chops, ready to dig into a government report from last year that found heartbreaking stories of indebtedness – such as that of an Ohio man who charged $3,200 on his cards and then saw the debt mushroom to $10,700 because of fees, penalties and interest.

But just as critics began to sharpen their verbal knives, Citigroup announced it would abandon “universal default,” a means of raising credit card interest rates that has universally been decried as unfair. Card companies often pull your credit report every month. Under universal default, they reserve the right to raise your rate if you are late paying any monthly bill. Being late on your car payment shouldn’t have anything to do with your credit standing with your credit card issuer, but universal default drew that connection anyway.

And there’s more:

Chase also offered another giveback before the hearing. It said it would stop charging over-limit fees. What are those? Remember when your card would be declined if you didn’t have enough credit balance remaining to make a purchase? Fee-creation teams realized the firms weren’t making any money doing that, so they quietly changed policies to allow consumers to exceed their credit limit and began tacking on a $40 fee for each month the limit was exceeded.

After that Ohio man mentioned that he was charged 47 over-limit fees on his $3,200 balance, Chase now says is will stop levying the fees after 90 days.

Of course, consumers should welcome such changes. It’s good to have the big boys abandon these outrageous fees. Perhaps they have seen the light.

Or perhaps something else is going on.

Notice the timing of the announcements — each one right before a potentially embarrassing congressional hearing. Having sat at such hearings, I can tell you that nothing blunts a good verbal bloodbath more effectively than a witness telling Congress, “Yep, we did that; we were wrong, and we don’t do that any more.”

John Freeland had a post here a few weeks ago about being caught up in the Citicard mess: Credit Card Slaves. Having been caught up in their mess in the past myself, I gave John some advice here. The advice worked, he reported later.

With the economy being not so rosy, the housing market sliding, this is a little piece of good news.

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