Made credit card payment early and now being penalised??

sjkitchie

I have aVirgin interest free credit card with the interest free stopping in March 2010. I have been making regular payments of £200 per month and notice that since August 2009 I have been charged monthly interest. Having looked back at my statements it would appear that on the July statement I have made 2 payments - 1 dated 17th June and the other 10th July. The July payment should have actually been paid on my August statement but it would appear that I should have made the payment 2 days later for this to happen. I have therefore been charged a £12 late payment fee and have been incurring interest monthly since which I was unaware of. I have written an email to Virgin and hope they will look on this favourably and refund me. Does anybody know what rights I have as I did inadvertently make the payment early and in reality did not miss a payment. Hope somebody can help me.

LeeSouthEast

You do not have any 'rights' per se. Virgin caught you out with a change in payment due date, as most providers like to do now and again. The chances of a refund/reinstatement are wildly variable, depending on the day, the moon phase, your balance and who you speak to.

To prevent this in the future, make them take their payment by Direct Debit.

dzug1

sjkitchie wrote: »

I have aVirgin interest free credit card with the interest free stopping in March 2010. I have been making regular payments of £200 per month and notice that since August 2009 I have been charged monthly interest. Having looked back at my statements it would appear that on the July statement I have made 2 payments - 1 dated 17th June and the other 10th July. The July payment should have actually been paid on my August statement but it would appear that I should have made the payment 2 days later for this to happen. I have therefore been charged a £12 late payment fee and have been incurring interest monthly since which I was unaware of. I have written an email to Virgin and hope they will look on this favourably and refund me. Does anybody know what rights I have as I did inadvertently make the payment early and in reality did not miss a payment. Hope somebody can help me.

Virgin may be sympathetic - but why has it taken you 5 months to notice? Your case would have been stronger if you had picked it up straightaway.

libellpop

LeeSouthEast wrote: »

You do not have any 'rights' per se. Virgin caught you out with a change in payment due date, as most providers like to do now and again. The chances of a refund/reinstatement are wildly variable, depending on the day, the moon phase, your balance and who you speak to.

To prevent this in the future, make them take their payment by Direct Debit.

Actually I had the same problem and I DID set up d/d payments!!
The way they got me was when I took out the card to make sure I didn't miss any payments I set up the d/d what I failed to realise and they failed to inform me was it takes 6 weeks to set up a d/d and 4 weeks for them to arrange first payment!!!
I never received any months interest free just a late penalty charge and a whopping big interest charge!! :mad:
I accept that I should have checked my statements before(which I tried to save them money by going paper free!!) but as a credit company they should have warned me by phone email or letter to make me aware of the situation.
Had I not set up the d/d they would have been straight on my case if I missed a payment and they didnt have any way of collecting it!!!

So to anyone reading this even if you do set up d/d you still need to make your first payment manually or they have got you!!

CannyJock

libellpop wrote: »

So to anyone reading this even if you do set up d/d you still need to make your first payment manually or they have got you!!

The standard trick for dealing with this is to request your statement date is set to "yesterday" when you call to activate the card. This gives you the maximum time before the first statement is produced and gives maximum time for your DD to be registered.

The other rule is of course to check your statement - if it doesn't say the payment will be collected by direct debit then it won't be.

Belt and braces is to make the first payment manually like you say, worst case scenario then is that you effectively make 2 payments on your first statement, but should be plain sailing from then on.

EDIT: It doesn't take 6 weeks to set up a d/d In practice can be done in 2 weeks - in reality can take longer but no reason for it to. There's a rule of thumb that the first payment can't be collected within 10 days of a mandate being issued, but there are exceptions possible. If a client doesn't have decent online banking facilities, I'd normally point them to Albany (ALBACS was the stalwart of electronic payments before corporate online banking developed to a useful level) - some details of Direct Debits Best Practice Guide that I give to clients can be downloaded from their website here.

sjkitchie

dzug1 wrote: »

Virgin may be sympathetic - but why has it taken you 5 months to notice? Your case would have been stronger if you had picked it up straightaway.

I opted to have paper free payments and as I always paid £200 monthly I had no reason to check the statements - in hindsight I should have. The annoying part for me is that I did make the payment - it was 2 days early and therefore was credited to the account on the July statement and not the August statement which is why they are saying I have missed a payment. Will know in future, but hoping they will be understanding. I received no email to notify me that payment had not been received for August which I would have thought would have been standard practice. You live and learn!!!

LeeSouthEast

I think you have grounds for them to be reasonable. Phone and ask. If you get nowhere, write and ask.

Jemma-T

sjkitchie wrote:

Made credit card payment early and now being penalised??.

You broke your contract. Not sure what the complaint is.

They may give you a goodwill gesture if you are very nice when you phone but I see no reason why they should.

woody01

in reality did not miss a payment

Harsh i admit, but in reality you did miss a payment.
The payment schedules are in place for a reason. Whether you paid 1 day too ealy or 20 days too early is not the point.
If the payment is early the financier will assume this is an extra payment. What else can they think?

If you are pleasant to them, i think you may get you £12 back though.

chattychappy

D/Ds are no panacea. Either people stay on top of things - check their statements etc., or they don't. If people don't keep on top of things, then D/D makes it easier to stay that way. No wonder the financial institutions are so keen on them - people can keep spending without the "worry" of making payments on time (ie having to look at their statement and noticing how much money they waste).

I've never signed a D/D and never missed a payment. Sure it might happen one day, but I'd rather pay the fee when it happens than accept the principle that organisations can take from my bank account what they think I owe them.

Plenty of stories here of D/Ds that have gone wrong. But I also know that also plenty of people do check their statements etc., and use them without a problem.

The OP should speak nicely to Virgin. They might refund some of the charges, but I fear that it could be quite difficult given the amount of time that has passed and consequently the amount of interest involved.

Good luck.

CannyJock

chattychappy wrote: »

but I'd rather pay the fee when it happens than accept the principle that organisations can take from my bank account what they think I owe them.

They can take from your account the amount that they notify you of at least 10 days in advance

chattychappy wrote: »

Plenty of stories here of D/Ds that have gone wrong. But I also know that also plenty of people do check their statements etc., and use them without a problem.

Last time we took a snapshot of posts and counted them up, the number of problems which could have been prevented by having a DD far outweighed the number of posts from people who had a problem with their DD. Of the posts where people had problems with their DD, the majority were that they assumed the "first" payment would come out by DD but hadn't actually had a statement confirming the payment would be taken by DD. But for sure, there are occasional problems caused when people don't fully understand how DD's operate and there's no reason why the card companies can't be clearer on these. Obviously the vast majority of people who do have DD's setup don't post when it all goes according to plan