A long time ago I wrote about how credit cards can forgive interest charges (i.e. late fees). This can happen more than once, but not easily. For those who allow credit charge pile up, this is not a story for you.
I was checking my Credit Card statement and found a credit charge for last month. That is rare, so I investigated further. Usually I pay off my credit cards every month. This is an important factor for this story.
The culprit for the past due payment was that I paid my bill from 3 different accounts that month. One of the payments from one of the banks got dated a day after the payment due date. This meant that part of my payment was “late”. Another important factor was that the total of my payments added to more than the Credit Card balance for the month.
I called the credit card company. Luckily there is an option for Dispute Credit Card Interest charge. A very kind young lady answered the phone after a short wait. I explained what had happened, and asked polity, “Can this past due fee please be reversed?”.
Previously I had to wait to see if the charge could be reversed, but not this time. The young lady looked at the payments and my record and simply reversed the charge for my account. This was a big relief for me.
The service rep pointed out that this is something that is done rarely. If you habitually don’t pay off your card, this forgiving of fees will not happen. She suggested setting up automatic bill payments to make sure this didn’t happen again.
What Did We Learn About a Late Credit Charge?
- No matter how smart you think you are, many times it is your fault.
- Being a jerk on the phone may make you feel better for the moment, but don’t expect any help from the person at the other end of the phone.
- If you have a relatively good payment record, you can ask for “redemption” from your late fees.
- Pay off your credit card balances every month, it helps your Credit Rating and other things.
- If you are absent minded, set up automatic payments for your Bills in general, or your Credit Card, in specific.
- Past due payment penalties on Credit Cards are no fun.
Good thing you reviewed the statements! Sometimes it’s easy just to pay in full and move on.
My opinion is always pay off your credit cards in full, but evidently I am in the minority.
Agreed! I’m with you and I do!
I agree wholeheartedly!!! Credit card debt is absolutely the worst.
And in general any consumer debt should be avoided (I recognize that may not always be possible for some, especially in such recent trying times, though with good planning, in most cases it should be).
I think that’s an important part to this story: you actually reviewed your statements! I sometimes find that when I have everything automated, it can also be hard to remember to review the statements. But it’s so important to review everything and make sure things are on the up and up.
Automation is very useful, but remember to audit.
If I can make a suggestion, use an app like Every Dollar for budget and log all transactions. It was a game changer for me!
Absolutely! I had tried a few different apps and had varying success, but I’ve been using Mint and I absolutely agree — it was a total game changer!
Awesome!!! My friend also mentioned Mint.
Why does your article above have an ad for Tangerine credit card showing a 4% promo? I contacted Tangerine and they say they have not offered that promo for years, only when the card was first introduced.
Just noticed that the ad for 2.8% on a bank account is also out of date…
The advertising firm told me they were to be updated, however, I have remedied here and will now spend time hunting down the rest of these nefarious ads.
+1
Why was the fact that your total payments was more than the balance an important fact?
Not sure it was that important, I think that it was a payment in FULL (i.e. paying the monthly balance off in full), was more important. She commented that the payment was more than the monthly payment and seemed happy about that. Bad phraseology on my part.