I am siding with you Core
(oh no ... i took a wrong turn in sesame street land)
Muhahahaha... welcome to the
dark side!
banks change their rules all the time.
Yes, but they do it in a straightforward manner... usually. And they do it in writing. If they want to start charging me a $10 ATM fee, that's fine, I'll see the charge on my statement and I'll probably change banks before I use the ATM again. If they quietly lower the interest rate to zero, once again, no big deal as you see it eventually and can make a decision at that point.
But think about this case: The agreement for my bank debit card has in the fine print that you are not allowed to purchase pharmaceuticals online with it. I have done this on more than one occasion. If they discover this 10 years down the road, what do you think is going to happen? They lock my account for weeks and prevent me from making withdrawals? Maybe go back and reverse all interest that I made over those 10 years?? No, worst case they cancel my debit card and cut me a check.
But no, with LC there are all these hidden gotchas that one has to worry about, and then you get to sit there and take guesses as to what's going to happen when you break some rule that you didn't even know existed. (I'm guessing most didn't know about this IRA restriction by the sounds of it.) You're forced to think to yourself, hmm, is this one going to have no detrimental effects, or get my IP blocked, or my account locked, account permanently closed, or money withheld? None of this is in writing where we can find it so they are free to make things up
after the fact.