First Consumer National Bank FCNB ripoff: Second Over the limit fee before receiving bill for the first! Portland Oregon
Saturday 03/20/2004, walk out to get the mail. To no surprise of mine there's my FCNB credit card bill. The surprise comes when I open it and find they've added another over the limit fee! I come inside go to the fileing cabinet to check when I mailed out my last payment and to see for what amount.
I mailed on time, they received on time, I added enough extra to the payment to take it below my credit line and cover the interest, plus a little extra! Why is this fee on here!
After calming down and trying to rationalize this, I came to the conclusion that the fee must be on some different cycle from the rest of the world. So, I thought I'd just call and get this straightened out. I
mean the fee only put me over by $31.94, no big deal, ha! I dial up the customer service # only to get the automated service which tells me that I am now over the limit by $66.94!!! Another FEE! I just got the bill, I'm looking at it now! The last payment wasn't late!, this one isn't due until 04/07/2004!
I don't know what's going on and seeing that there is no way to actually contact someone, I'm at a loss as to what to do! Judging by all of the other letters I've read here, this is a major problem and something should be.
Brian & lora
Philippi, West Virginia
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Mike
Radford,Virginia,
U.S.A.
Overlimit fees always occur in two's.
#2Consumer Suggestion
Tue, March 23, 2004
These fees are the cash cow of the credit card industry. Since interest rates and late fees are somewhat restricted by laws, the overlimit fee has become the best way to extract mo' money from the consumer.
If the balance is over the limit AT ANY TIME during the billing month, an over limit fee will be applied. Thus, last month your balance went over limit, probably on the last day when the finance charges were applied. Then, while the bill was in the mail to you, the next billing month started, and of course it was still over limit. So immediately another overlimit fee was applied before you even knew about the first one. The best part is that if you don't realize this and only pay enough to cover the first over limit fee, this month's fee will put the balance over limit next month as well, and the cycle never ends.
So in order to avoid being over limit next month, assuming you don't use the card any, you need to pay at least:
the amount over the limit (including last month's fee)
plus another over limit fee for this month
plus the finance charges that will be added at the end of this month.
plus some more just to be sure.
Again they're hoping you won't realize this and only pay the first part, and do exactly the same thing every month from now on.
The only defense is to stay well under the limit. Banks use formulas to set credit limits which are designed to TRAP the consumer. They know if you run the account up to the limit, considering your income and other debts, you will have a very hard time ever paying it off. That may not seem like good business sense, but it is because then they can hit you with finance charges and fees for the rest of your life if you let them. No one should ever go out and use all the credit they can possibly get approved for, they will get into trouble. It is by design.