Lat payment fee

Squire_Fulwood

Checking up on my credit card summary I found that I had been charged £12 for a late payment. This caused an eyebrow to raise since on the 4th July I checked the summary and paid sufficient funds for the account to be in credit. Obviously I phoned the credit card company.

I had a great deal of difficulty following what the nice lady said due to her having a pretty thick accent but I was polite and did not complain. I tried to hang on to her words.

What I think happened was that I paid off the card plus some extra on the 4th. MBNA in their wisdom deem the 6th to be the statement date even though the summary appears on the 4th. A transaction appeared on the 5th putting the account £10 in the red and so this appeared on the statement. Since this £10 was not paid on the due date I was charged £12 late payment fee.

The nice lady refunded the late payment fee “as a gesture of good will” and spent the rest of the conversation trying to sell me additional credit cards for my wife and family. Didn’t seem to matter that I don’t have a wife and family.

I post this story as a warning and would like to say the following.

New Faster Payments are pretty quick and the card holder should check the dates.

The Banker is always right especially when being an inflexible money grabber.

Banker’s bonuses are perfectly justified and should not be envied by the public.

I am contrite and touch my cap in thanks to the nice bank lady for giving me my money back.

There will be a couple of posts following this one telling me I am wrong and should pay more attention to dates. There is always at least one.

Lip_Stick

This happened with a catalogue I used. I paid off a large chunk that was owed, but because I'd paid it too early I got hit with a late payment fee.

A few weeks ago I was going on holiday so I asked what would happen as the statement was due to come out whilst I was away. I was told there was nothing I could do about it. Absolutely idiotic policy penalising people who have to pay early! Turned out that I had a few days to get the payment in when I got back so didn't get hit with the fine.

marywooyeah

I'd reccomend setting up a direct debit to cover the minimum payment in future as it is confusing as to the statement date and payment date and they seem to change each month too - the cynic in me says they do it on purpose to trip people up and render them liable for these fees! if you do the DD you can then make one off online or phone payments to pay off the rest of the balance, never failed me yet.

Olokia

On one of my credit cards, I paid by Direct Debit and still got late payment fees. Happened about 3 times and each time I had to phone up and get it credited back to me.

Squire_Fulwood

marywooyeah wrote: »

the cynic in me says they do it on purpose to trip people up and render them liable for these fees!

I have the same cynic in me also for the following reason.

I am not boasting but I often pay my credit card up each month. (Please don't get jealous). Occasionally I purchase something large which has to be paid off over some months. Then and only then the "Payment Due" date starts moving around varying from the normal by as much as a week.

Now the cynic in me might think that this also was done on purpose in order to make me late in paying and indeed on one occasion I did incur a late payment fee. To avoid this happening again I took to paying the account early with result as described in post #1 of this thread.

marywooyeah

I'm not jealous lol I pay mine off too - I have cards where you earn reward points so use them to gain point without paying interest. I've never had the problem from the first post though - just seems like you can't really win even if you do pay it off!

biscit

Squire_Fulwood wrote: »

I have the same cynic in me also for the following reason.

I am not boasting but I often pay my credit card up each month. (Please don't get jealous). Occasionally I purchase something large which has to be paid off over some months.

Why should we get jealous, this is perfectly normal, responsible use of a credit card, nothing exceptional.

Then and only then the "Payment Due" date starts moving around varying from the normal by as much as a week.

Now the cynic in me might think that this also was done on purpose in order to make me late in paying and indeed on one occasion I did incur a late payment fee. To avoid this happening again I took to paying the account early with result as described in post #1 of this thread.

There's a fixed number of days between the statement day and the due date. The day will move about, but I'm not sure why it would be a week's worth. Does the statement day change if the statment day falls on a weekend? I used to have a credit card with a major bank that did that.

Squire_Fulwood

When I used to leave payment until later in the month I only used to look at the "Payment Due" date. When I bought a large item they sent a statement which included the information that they would be moving my date to .....some other date but they sent this information two months before it happened.

My mistake then was that I should have carried that statement around with me as a reminder. The first time it came to mind was when I went to pay the bill I already had a late payment fee due to the fact the date had moved forward in the month by nearly a week.

They did the same thing on another occasion after a large purchase but by then I was paying earlier in the month to counter the tactic.

Post #1 happened thus. My statement date has been 3rd of the month for many months. In July that was on a Sunday so the statement day was moved to the 5th (not the sixth as I said earlier) On Monday 4th the summary appeared so I paid it. On the 5th I bought something and this went on the next statement.

My mistake was to think that since the complete summary had appeared then it meant the statement had also. Apparently they lead separate lives.

Knowing (or believing) that I had paid the outstanding amount up I did not check the summary since I thought my bill was paid and I was just building up the balance to be paid next month.

I don't know if one date moves and causes the other date to move since I have only ever worried about them one at a time.

Squire_Fulwood

I am disinclined to do all the date research necessary to prove that I am not pulling the wool about the movement of the "Payment Due" date by as much as a week. However, I looked up an earlier thread on the subject and found that someone else had the same problem and the following is a copy and paste from their post.


"My barclaycard date changes randomly it seems.

April 13th
May 11th
June 5th
July 11th
August 10th

Guess which one i got caught exactly the same ending up with a 12 fine for paying a day late"

biscit

Squire_Fulwood wrote: »

I am disinclined to do all the date research necessary to prove that I am not pulling the wool about the movement of the "Payment Due" date by as much as a week.

I feel you have misinterpreted the tone of some of the posts to this thread!

I didn't disbelive you when you said the statement varied by a week, I just couldn't understand why it would happen like that.

Squire_Fulwood

Don't worry about it. I just needed to look up some old records for my own satisfaction. In an old thread there seemed to be others who had the same experience as me.