John
SLC,#2UPDATE Employee
Mon, October 27, 2008
The charges are not posted immediately because Discover does not get charged at the time of purchase. When you run your card through a machine, the merchant location obtains and authorization to charge your card. Basically all that happens is they are provided a code to confirm that the amount they authorized is infact going to be paid WHEN they process the actual debit. It does not show on Discover's end as a charge until they actually debit the account because authorizations are not necessarily the actual amount to be charged (example is gas pumps that authorize anywhere between 1-100 dollars) and is not garunteed to even end up being charged (you set up a new service, they ping the account for an authorization to make sure it is a valid account, but dont really start charging for 1 month or something along those lines). So if you are having an issue of the charges posting late...look for a merchant that does not batch up 1-2 days worth of transactions for processing as Discover has no way of knowing what the actual amount is or if it is really a charge until the merchant actually debits the account. Regarding your balance in full payments, you do not get charged interest if your statement balance is paid. For example, if your due date is the 15 of month and the cycle (cut off date for charges) is the 16th, and you get a statement stating your balance is 1,000, due by 11/15/08 (meaning this is all the charges from the prior cycle, so 9/16-10/16). To avoid finance charges once you are in the grace period, you just pay the 1,000. It does not matter how many charges you make after 10/16. Just that statement. On 11/16/08 you would get another statement with the due date of 12/15, and again, you just need to pay the balance on that statement. So summed up, 1) Discover has no control over how quick the merchant posts the actual charges, and that date where you state they are backdating, that is the transaction date, it is when the transaction took place and is just a reference for you (post date is the date it posted as a debit and is what is used for finance charges). 2) You do not need a 0 balance on the account when the statement is to be sent to avoid finance charges, you just need to have covered the last statement recieved in full.