ALLEN PARK -- Tom and Denise Clark don’t have a history of being late with their credit card payment and the Allen Park couple always pays the minimum balance. So, when they received a notice from Bank of America telling them their interest rate would spike from 9.9% to nearly 16% they were shocked.

Denise called Bank of America immediately but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “She said the minute we spent on it, it would go up, so I told her we were shredding it. I took my card over to the paper shredder and I stuck it in the shredder and I let her hear the noise,” Denise said.

Denise’s husband, Tom, said he was irate with Bank of America but he felt helpless. “As an individual trying to fight a corporation like this, it's almost impossible, they told us flat there was nothing we could do,” Tom said.

Tom said with three kids away at college, his being retired and Denise being disabled they like to use their card frequently because it had such a low interest rate. “We would use this for car repairs miscellaneous college expenses and purchases that had had to get for our kids,” Tom said.

The couple carries about a 12-thousand-dollar balance and they intend to pay that off but Denise said living without the credit card will put a pinch on their lifestyle. “This kills us where we used to have enough to have a lot of food in the house, we're living day to day just like everyone else in the world, it just smacks you down,” Denise said.