dirtyDogStink

Avoiding some of credit card companies evil little tricks

Wednesday, March 07 2007

As I logged into my Live Hotmail account this morning, the MSN Today page highlighted this article: Credit card companies' evil tricks. That caught my attention. :-\

It's a pretty quick read and talks about mysterious interest rate changes, late fees, credit reports and a few other good things to know. I suggest you take the 5 minutes to read it...even if it's just a refresher. What caught my attention specifically though was the suggestion to set up automatic payments to avoid late fees and interest.

I have been banking online for years and am quite used to the processes, but had never setup automatic payments because I like to know when & where my money is going. For years I have also used a single credit card that was racking up Alaska Airline miles. Easy enough...I would get my bill in the mail [I like to keep paper records] and pay it in full by the due date. I get to float my money for 30 days interest free and rack up 1,000-2,000 miles per month.

Well, I recently changed to a Chase Amazon.com VISA [1% cash back used at Amazon.com] and in setting up the account I accidentally selected paperless statements [nothing comes in the mail]. Oops. I missed my first payment in January and got slapped with a $39 late fee and roughly $20 in interest. I found this out when checking my card activity online and immediately submitted an electronic payment for the balance in full. Their customer service was extremely nice when I called and said I never received my statement which is why I missed the payment due date. They refunded all of the fees and interest. Thumbs up on customer sat. ;-)

It was then I realized why I might not have received my statement. Sure enough, when I checked online I was setup with the paperless option. There went my monthly payment reminder! Ok, fixed that.

Anyway, this article brought up a great option for me. Set up automatic payments for the minimum amount due! In theory, I'll never need this to happen because I pay off the balance in full every month. But...and we all know that butts happen, in case I don't make the payment in time this option will at least prevent me from being slapped with a $39 late fee!

~tod

tags: money, credit+cards