Chase Aka Bank One Aka Cardmember Services Late payment ending low interest promotions, just a matter of time. Wilmington Delaware
I was able to obtain a low 5.99% interest transfer of balance line of credit.
In the fine print is the clause that a late payment will end this promotional rate.
No problem, I usually pay online, on time and even early.
Problem is this company will periodically just change the due date a few days earlier, oops late payment. They charge late fees on the weekend but they only recieve payments on non holliday week days. I am sure it is written in there somewhere that it is up to you to know the rules.
The last late fee I recieved for a bill normally due on the 18th was sent on the 14 electronically to have plenty of time to get there. I use Quicken so most of my due dates have been fixed as agreed to by the billing company including this one, especially after the last time when they took away the 5.99%. I made extra sure that the billing date would be the 18th. Delivery times have been two days for delivery.
Chase had changed the delivery date for only this month to the 17th, the delivery times was changed to three days. They did not miss charging the late fee on sunday the 17th but would not take the payment until Monday the 18th.
The same thing happened when I changed to Wells fargo Bill Pay. They just could not get my payment there on time like I had been doing for many years prior and throw a holliday in and oops, we're sorry we will have to charge you our high interest rates from now until the loan is paid off.
Yes it is a scam and it is probably legal. So it is up to the individual use or not to use this company. there is not a law against bad Ethics that I know of, people just did not purposely take advantage customers like they do these days.
Consumers beware, they know with a little help from them you will not be able to make every payment on time. That is why they offer such low rates.
John
Arizona City, Arizona
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Mary Clare
Albany,New York,
U.S.A.
Beware -- Due Dates are Becoming a "Moving Target"!
#2Consumer Comment
Fri, July 13, 2007
I have been carefully montioring my Chase account online so that I can time my credit card payments to coincide with my paycheck. For the past five months since opening the account, my due date has been the 6th or 7th of the month (depending on which falls on a weekday).
When this last statement was printed, suddenly the new date is the first of the month with NOprior notification that they were changing it--giving me, in effect, a whole week LESS to make the payment.
I looked at the NEW printed statement and it's there in big letters; but if I hadn't received this until I received it in the mail AND read it over very carefully, I could very well have ended up making an inadvertant late payment. Their explanation is that it is "business standard" to change the due date for those of us who "partially pay" their balance every month so that we don't have "less than 20 days after a statement is printed" to pay the balance. Huh?? Isn't "partial payment" the idea behind a revolving account to begin with?
And if you want to give an adequate cusion between the statement print date and the next due date, why would you change the DUE DATE to an earlier date instead of the changing the STATEMENT DATE?? And next month (or in some subsequent month), are they going to fix it so that I suddenly have TWO payments due in that month?? This has me completely scratching my head.
Oh...they have kindly "offered" to change my due date to a more convenient date if I wish. What I *wish* is that they hadn't changed it to begin with -- or at least extended me the courtesy of some prior notification! The red flags have been raised.