I recently got a call on a Sunday afternoon from Citibank, the lady said they hadn’t received my payment. I had made a payment in plenty of time through their website, but I looked in my bank account and sure enough nothing had been deducted. Apparently I forgot to click the final Confirm/Submit on their site and the payment didn’t go through.
As a result they assessed a late fee, which I didn’t expect but I didn’t contest, it was technically my fault as far as I know. But ALSO, they raised my interest rate up to 18%!
I was going to call them about it but used their online message center instead. Just one message briefly explaining the problem and telling them I either had to get that rate lowered or transfer my balance got my interest rate down to 10%.
So keep on those CC companies about your interest rate. It keeps creeping up whether you have late payments or not, and I’ve always been successful in getting them to lower it when I ask.
I only have one credit card that I don’t pay off in full each month: it was issued by my credit union, I’ve had it for aeons, and I don’t remember the last time the interest rate went up – even when my credit limit has gone up, and even when my balance has hovered around the limit. But then, I also have excellent credit and have never had a late payment.
Credit unions aren’t as evil as normal banks, maybe I should see about getting a credit union credit card and tell Citibank to go take a hike. I already told Chase to take a hike.
I should get a Debit card, but I never balance my checkbook so I’m never 100% sure how much cash I have. I know, I should. But I don’t. I can get online to see my current balance, but that doesn’t take into account outstanding checks.
I did that once. I was at 0% interest, so I called and bitched and they put me back to 0%. I was surprised by how easy it was considering I had a $15,000 balance, but it pays to be firm I guess.
Also, some people are not aware of the Universal Default Clause. If you are late with one payment on one card, the interest rates on every single one of your cards can go up.
Except if you order stuff online with a debit card, and there’s a dispute of some sort, you don’t get your money back until the dispute is settled. Whereas with a credit card, they take the charge off your account as soon as you start the dispute, and only put it back if it isn’t settled in your favor.
Just do it. Make a habit of it. Give yourself a half hour per week to sit down and balance the damn thing. It doesn’t take that much time, and the discipline will only improve your finances.
Banks love customers like you. The various fees and penalties are pure profit for them.
I’m sure this depends on the bank or credit union. I went through this twice, once with Wells Fargo and once with Omniamerican CU. In both cases, I got the money back within a couple of days, well before the investigation was completed. Ask your card provider what protections they provide beyond the legal requirements.
Meh. I use my checking account to pay my credit card, pay rent, pay health insurance, and get cash. There’s a few month’s pay in there, plus half a year’s pay in the savings account. It takes a non-zero amount of time to balance, which is too much time. How exactly will it improve my finances? Why does the bank love me?
The only time I paid a bank a fee was when I forgot $700 in an account, moved, and forgot to update my address. They charged me $10 for that.
I recently got nailed by Bank of America. I’ve had a card with them for, oh, 28 years (North Carolina National Bank, then NCNB, then Nationsbank, then BoA). I have a small balance with them. Couple hundred dollars. I pay extra most months, but also have it set up to auto-pay the minimum balance every month in case I forget.
Well, a couple of months ago, they sent me a new card with a new number, for some administrative reason.
This futzed up the auto pay, in a month where I just happened to not get around to making an extra payment. The first I heard of this, as I hadn’t yet done my checking account balancing for the month, was when I got an “er, you forgot to pay” mailing from them. I looked, and sure enough, no payment was auto-paid.
It took an hour on the phone, they had to activate the new card number for online services (though I could see the balance just fine), and they admitted it was their fault, and they credited me the late fee and lowered my rate back to the promotional one. Or I’d have closed the account and moved my business elsewhere. OK, I’m not all that profitable a client, but at least they did this with minimal fuss (though the first person I spoke with had a definite “riiiiiight” tone in her voice.
I didn’t say I don’t pay attention to my statements. Honestly, I balanced my checkbook faithfully for years and finally one day I said to myself “Why am I doing this, I have enough money, I don’t need to know to the penny all the time.”
Is there really any reason to do this anymore? I have never balanced my checking account in my life, but I typically know exactly how much money is in there due to internet banking. Maybe I can get away with this because I write so few checks but I cannot imagine having an issue.
My wife and I write enough checks and use our debit cards enough times in any given week - and not all charges and checks appear the same day, and on weekends their use often is rolled over to the next week - we’d be lost if we didn’t do the homework ourselves.
It’s also been much easier to figure out where the bank went wrong when mistakes are made.
Do people still have cheque accounts? I thought plastic sort of finished those.
I think I am one of those people who the banks dislike. I have a credit card but never have any money owing on it. For purchases online I use a debit card (an account with only ever a few hundred dollars in it).
Seems to me the only way not balancing would be an issue is if you didn’t pay attention to the charges on your monthly bank statements, OR if the bank didn’t list all fees and charges on those statements. I never had a problem with my bank not listing everything.
With Internet banking and ATMs, you know all the time how much the bank thinks you have, and unless it’s noticeably wrong I don’t see the problem. Of course my monthly spending and budget are pretty stable.
I used to record the numbers of the cheques I wrote and check off the ones that had cleared whenever I updated my bank book. That is the closest I ever came to “balancing” my cheque book. I still write the numbers down mostly out of habit but since I went to “paperless banking” (no statements and no bank books) I don’t check off the cheques that have cleared; I just look online every few days to see the state of my bank account. If a cheque surprises me I can look at a PDF of the scanned cheque for free (one of the reasons I went to “paperless banking”; I’d pay a service charge to look at the scanned cheques otherwise).
The chances approach nil that I would ever overdraw my bank account even if I screwed up and forgot about a large cheque. I always maintain at least $1,000 in my bank account because that gives me free chequing, free debits from my bank card, free use of the ATM, etc. In a manner of speaking, the $1,000 is my “overdraft protection” in the sense that if I go under that I’ll be PO’ed with myself given that I’ll have to pay service charges that month, but nothing will bounce.
And yes these days a book of cheques lasts me a long time, but I would not like to lose the ability to occasionally write a cheque. Handy for giving significant amount of money to individuals (as opposed to companies). I also almost always write a cheque rather than use a credit card when making a charitable donation so the charity doesn’t have to pay a percentage to a credit card company.
