Credit card companies quick to raise rates, fees
Credit card companies quick to raise rates, fees
Paying late bills barely better than never
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Greg Fischer was already fed up with Bank of America for doubling his credit card’s interest rate to 28.99 percent — the price for being a couple of weeks late with a payment in April.
What sent him over the top, he said, was the bank’s decision to rule his September payment late, too. He paid on the due date on the bank’s Web site. But he paid at 4:10 p.m. — past a 3:30 cutoff that Fischer said he wasn’t aware of.
That payment cost him not just a late fee. It also meant he would have to live even longer with the “default” interest rate, which the bank applied retroactively to the balance on his account. Bank of America told him it would not consider lowering the rate until he paid on time for six months straight.
“Ten years of a great track record as a customer, conversations and detailed notes with several customer service folks got me absolutely nowhere,” said Fischer, who lives in Macon. “A 40-minute ‘late’ payment is going to cost me hundreds of dollars in interest payments if I cannot come up with the money to pay off this card in full.”
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January 6th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
It is 6:45 on the 6th of January and I am supposed to pay my insurance today but i cant find a way to pay it online like the last time I did. You need to send out reminders by email or my mail before the date of payment so people can mail in their money or do it online.