Halifax late fees - is this fair?

fay144

I took out a halifax 0% for 9 months card, as I'm getting married in Feb, and thought it would be handy for putting my dress etc on.

I had about £500 on it, and made a payment towards that at the end of May, of £150 ish. A few days later, I went onto digital banking, and saw my statement, dated 30th May, with minimum payment required of about £6.

On the accounts summary, it said last payment received on the 30th May, so I thought - fine, that covers it.

I went on holiday, came back, and had a letter saying I'd missed a payment, and had my credit limit cut, and a late fee of £12. When I called it said my payment was actually marked as the 29th, so was a day early. They had no explaination as to why it said the 30th in the accounts summary.

I thought this was unfair, as while the payment had been shown in the 30th May statement and I shouldn't have just looked at the totals, the dates shown were misleading. I wrote a letter to the complaints department asking them to drop the fees, but received a "no, sorry" letter in return.

I figured, fair enough - I should have checked the statement more carefully. My credit limit had been cut as a result and I resented the £12 fee, but no harm done.

This month, I looked at my statement, and noticed £5 interest. I called to query, and was told that because I'd missed a payment the introductary rate had been removed.

I've now paid off the full balance, and when that clears I will close my account - as I would have done straight away if they'd told me about the interest rate at the time.

My questions are
1) Should they have told me that the interest rate had changed?
2) Will this affect my credit history?

I'm just raging that they managed to get another £5 off of me. I've never paid a bank or credit card fee in my life before, and it's making me :mad:

Fay

Penelopa.Pitstop

In my opinion you didn't pay the minimum payment and were fined for this. You paid part of the balance but before the end of billing period so it doesn't count as minimum payment.

RTNI

Answers to your questions:

1) You are told that to benefit from the 0% you need to make payments on time and stay within your limit. As you have not made a payment on time this was removed. You were told in the T&C's.

2) Depends on how long the payment was late by; usually anything less than 5 working days then no it won't show on credit reference, but longer that this then yes. In your case it probably will.

Best to put this down to experience and move on.

HTH.

fay144

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate that I did miss the payment, and can't really argue the case, as regards the £12 late fee (though I still say the date against the payment on the website should match the date that they actually use). While it's annoying that I've been penalised for not paying £5 when I paid £150 the day before, and another £100 as soon as I realised that wasn't enough (two weeks later), I accept that I was technically in the wrong. (It does rile me that I specifically went into digital banking to check that the payment would be within the period to cover my minimum payment that month before I went on holiday, and based on the dates in the account summary it appeared to be. It's not like I forgot.)

What's really annoying me though, is that in the original letter, my phone calls to customer services, and my commumications with the complaints department, no one ever mentioned the fact that my interest rate had went up.

As you say though, it was bound to be in the terms and conditions.

Stephen_Leak

A cautionary tale.

Internet banking is just a high-tech' cheque.

Always set up a DD for at least the minimum amount for this type of card.

Milarky

This is the second complaint I've seen of someone who paid 'early' by mistake and thereby missed making the official minimum payment. It's doubly unfortunate that they were taken off the 0% because of this - but that is in the promotional terms and conditions.

The basics of credit cards have not changed much however - so I'm a little surprised that people do get caught out by something so 'obvious' to others.

The best 'weapon' anyone can have in a situation like this is to read those terms and conditions and understand them as well as they can. I'm not saying this is altogether easy however, so the 'mission' of forums like this one remains to circulate as much basic information about credit cards (and other products) as possible. Once you know how a credit is 'supposed' to work you are in a much better position of ask questions about specific deals and anticipate problematic areas.