Just got my first statement on my Hechts account. I got it when buying a gift. The clerk said apply and get 10% off - I did, was approved and left with my purchase. blah blah blah. The interesting thing is the statement has a MAIL BY date NOT a DUE DATE. I would argue a postmark date would confirm payment date, not the date it is received, or the date it is entered into the computer, as my other accounts behave. That being the case, it seems like a great way to avoid confusion and problems. I wish I had that with the other cards. -Peace, Dave
Have a Lord & Taylor account(May Co)& mine says the same thing;make CERTAIN that it posts 1 day before billing date. Don't trust the mail;if possible,walk payment into store & get receipt. Lord & Taylor mails to Cleveland,OH. Sister Girl
lbrown, I don't really understand your fanaticism (sp? someone?) over this whole due date thing. In the five years I've had credit I have never once had a company lose, hold or misapply my payments. I should point out that I have always and will continue to use the postal system for paying my bills. Maybe the post offices in the Old Line State are just on the ball? I have even mailed a payment to Citibank on the day it was due--knowing it was late and fully expecting a late charge to be assessed--and it posted to my account 3 days after I mailed it, with NO late charge. I guess the point of this digression is, for Pete's sake quit scaring the newbies into thinking every bank out there is conspiring to bleed them dry! Just take a deep breath--it'll be OK! I promise! In keeping with the topic of the original post, I love the mail-by date that Hecht's uses. The Target Guest card has a "mail by...to reach us by..." set of dates on the statement, which is also helpful. I hope the VISA uses the same system.
You're right : Complementing the credit industry for their honesty and nobility is what this board is all about.
Actually, I was just curious to know from whence your deep mistrust of the system arises; specifically how have you been mistreated, and by whom? In the true spirit of this board, I think it would be of great help to those rebuilding their credit to know who to steer clear of and who in your esteemed opinion is more trustworthy. Give us the dirt! Tell us your story! I'm not picking a fight; goodness knows we have enough of those going on around here.
Over the years there have been countless times that payments I have sent have disappeared into thin air. I bet I have close to 100 checks that just vanished from the face of the earth. It is so bad that if a check doesn't show up as a credit on the bill or isn't cancelled by my bank I don't even bother to do a stop payment. I just send a new check. In all my years of doing this I have never seen one of the orginial checks that I replaced go through my bank. Ocassionally I have had to replace the original check with up to 4 replacement checks as just like the original they vanished too. ========== Most Recent Incidents ======== 1. Check to Bank 1 mailed 9-17-01 cashed 9-27-01 Never credited. 2. Check to MBNA mailed 10-12-01 disappeared 3. Another check to MBNA mailed 10-29-01 cashed 11-06-01 never credited. 4. Check to Peoples Bank mailed 11-05-01 vanished. 5. Check to Phone Co mailed 10-30-01 disappeared 6. 4 checks to Rumpke mailed 1 each of the past 4 months returned to me by Rumpke. I have even sent payments by certified return receipt mail and they still vanish. I have mailed payments from 4 different cities in 2 different states and everyone of them disappeared. ================================== With their record like this I have no reason to be skeptical do I? When I mail a payment and it never shows up who else do I blame besides the creditor or the post office? Any suggestions??
Damn! That's some serious bad luck. Sounds like your post office to me. Where is it located, in outer space? LOL Guess I've just been lucky. Hope things get better for you! )
Wow!! I guess that would make a person bitter. Sounds like you have a postal worker who is dumping his mailbag into the dumpster and heading for the local bar. No slur of postal workers intended, but hey, it has happened and even made the news. Have you filed complaints with the postmaster general?
That might explaine it if only one post office was invovled.But how do you account for all the payments vanishing when they were mailed from 4 different cities in 2 different states? Sure is a puzzler isn't it?
Many times. Even had an inspector come to the house once. None of the many pieces of lost mail have ever been found. All of This is bad enough but when they voided the only way to prove when you paid a mailed in payment it was the straw that broke the camels back. AND To think people are being fleeced on late charges for this kind of crap: It just sucks!
Sounds like an absolutely, totally, impossible problem to me. I have never heard of anything like this before. I think if my luck had been that bad, I would only get cards from local banks where I could hand-carry the payment into the local office in cash, and watch the teller post it with my own two eyes, then walk out with a receipt in my hand to prove to anyone who asked that I had paid on time. I would absolutely get rid of any cards I could not pay in person, no matter what it took to do it. I guess i have really been fortunate with my card companies, post offices, etc. Thank goodness!
I do that with 2 cards now. The same thing happens there also. I 'm fighting one now. I have had the same problem when paying in person at the phone co and gas co too.
THIS ONE TOPS THEM ALL Several years ago I mailed several checks to the Elect Companys local & home offices that never got credited. Some of them were even mailed CRRR. I mailed them from several different cities in two different states. In addition I dropped checks into their night deposit box 3 different times that weren't credited either. Every time I called them and asked why a payment wasn't credited they told me that they never got the check. This went on for several months until finally I got a disconnection notice for non payment. I took the ledger I keep on the account and showed it to the office manager. I asked him to explain how not 1 of 10 checks mailed from 4 towns in 2 states ever got there. I also asked him how they could claim they didn't get the checks that I had a green card for. When I asked him how do you not get checks that I put in your drop slot he was at a total loss for words. I gave him a copy of the ledger and he said he would check things out. Two weeks later he called and told me that all 10 checks were being credited to the account and it was paid in full. They found the checks buried in the bottom of a desk drawer in an unused back office. What had been happening is every time they got a check from me they just tossed it into that desk drawer instead of crediting it to the account.
