There's a great post over at Verbatim, the Communispace blog, by Karen Barone, discussing a project she did some years ago interviewing customers who had stopped paying their credit card bill. A major finding-people wanted to find some way to connect with their credit-card provider to address their situation. (Sadly, it's not clear that the companies Barone worked with did anything with the information she provided them.)
The credit-card providers have millions of customers that they treat like indentured servants. In addition to restraints on their business practices via the recently-passed reform legislation, the bill is finally coming due ("Consumer Credit: The Next Crisis" by MacMillan and Jarvis, on harvardbusiness.org) for their history of hard sell, easy credit and swift punishment.
I think credit-card processors could do a lot to turn their reputations and the futures of their businesses around by collecting some stories and, unlike Barone's experience, acting on them.
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