The CARD act has improved things. No longer can your rate be randomly increased without advance notice. And there are a few other things that have been improved.
But as we have reported before the credit card companies are doing whatever they can to maintain their dwindling profits. And dwindling they are since they can no longer charge the most egregious fees and consumers are steadily reducing their reliance on credit cards.
But it is rather vague how the credit card penalties rates work.
Check out Credit Card ?gotchas?.