My wife got a CHASE VISA card in December 06. She charged up a few Christmas gifts, etc and did not really use the card much since then and we have just been paying down the balance, or so we thought. I started making payments in January 07 online from our CHASE bank account. Since she got the card, I made at least one payment each month (the minimum) and extra payments in several months; a total of 11 payments in the seven months that she has had the card. We had not been looking at the monthly statements, as she was not using the card.
I just sent in the payments each month under the naive assumption that this was all we needed to do. Not looking at the statement every month is a mistake we won't repeat.
She got a late payment notice in the mail this month. I was confused because we sent the payment in as usual the previous month. I looked at the statements and, lo and behold, they had been charging us a $39/month late fee every month since March. This seemed strange given that we faithfully sent in payments each month and extra in some months. We called them up and got the explanation that a payment has to be posted between the statement date and the due date to count for that billing cycle.
As it happens, I usually pay all of the credit cards in the first few days of the month. The statement comes out on the 8th.By sending my payments before the 8th, they were not being counted for the current billing cycle. This means that we were getting a late payment charge of $39 every month because we paid before the 8th. To be clear, we were not a month behind in the payment cycle, our early payments were not being counted because they were posted before the statement was issued.
I admit that this would have been sorted out months ago if we had read the statements but we are probably not the only ones out there who throw the envelope in a shoe box and just pay the bills online. If this sounds like you, *don't pay them until them until after send you the monthly statement and read the statement! *
The service representatives at CHASE agreed to waive the final late fee but this was not much comfort after getting hit with five of them. We still feel ripped off. I thought I would warn other folks who may be getting nailed for paying early.
Anonymous
Milford, Connecticut
U.S.A.
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