I have to scream for a moment. Blue now assesses finance charges if you do not pay by the due date; not the statement date, but that stupid due date; that they put in little tiny print and give you a whole 15 days to pay. My bill was due by 8/27...the statement date was 9/6. I have always just paid by the statement date before and was never assessed finance charges (I also do this with the corporate card). So I made by big freaking $158 payment on the 30th (paid in full). Today, I receive my statement...$1.24 finance charge. I call Amex to see what is going on and she said you paid late. I said "no I paid by the statement date and I paid the bill in full". She said it must be paid by the due date. I said "since when?" She says that has always been their policy. "No it hasn't." I told her I did this constantly and has never faced a finance charge. She told me that is their policy. I said "you're giving me 15 days to make payment." And I don't receive the statement until the 20th of each month...so technically I have one week to make payment on this account, before I am assessed a late charge." I know it is only a lousy $1.24, but I am so ticked. I will pay them the damn $1.24 and not use the freaking card again and that is what I told her. And then I hung up. I know...not the most mature approach, but this is stupid. Amex is giving me a 15 day grace period and my payment is not due a lousy 2-3 days before the statement date, but 10 days before the statement date! Unreal! I almost told them to close the account. I still may, I am just so ticked. I am tired of these stupid companies trying to make a dollar off every damn thing we do. Pay over the phone..hit with a fee. Go overlimit...hit with a fee. Pay one day late...hit with a fee. I am surprised they don't charge me for paying online...I am sure it will occur. Ugh. I hate credit cards. All of them are going in the sock drawer. Actually, when I get home I am going to cut them up into little tiny pieces and then shred them. Dani PS I realize there are more important things going on in life and that $1.24 is nothing and I need to quit bitching, but I am having a lousy day to begin with and just feel like venting. I feel better now.
Credit card companies have gotten really, really edgy lately; the only consolation, I guess, is that their bad attitude must be because they are doing very poorly, either from a profit standpoint, loss control, or both. I used to schedule credit card payments using the calendar feature on Quicken, so that they would be paid right before the due date. Not any more: now I write a check the same day I get the bill and drop it in the mailbox at work the next business day. I think I've mentioned before, I use AMEX for convenience and have a backup MC for when they don't take AMEX. Besides that I have about $20000 of credit lines in the sock drawer, should there be a disaster and I really need it, but otherwise they need me far more than I need them - any CC company that treats me otherwise is ignored. See, I can be as edgy as they can ;-) I should start sending replies to all of the promotional offers I receive every day: "I'm sorry, your request to receive my application for your credit card has been declined. The explanation for this decision is one of the items indicated below: -- Your interest rate is higher than other issuers in your credit category. -- Too many fees. A large number of fees may indicate that you are facing financial difficulties. -- Too many inquiries. Your customer service call center is overloaded with too many inquiries, indicating that you may have aquired too many new accounts. -- Derogatory Information on your report. A review of information on the Creditnet discussion board has revealed items which may be considered by some applicants as negative, such as lowering credit lines and jacking rates. Please address any questions you may have to me in writing, posted via US Mail, as I am unable to determine how to answer a phone and my fax number changes daily."
racer, That is absoutely brilliant. Oh gosh, I think will do that...if for nothing else to make me feel better. The CCC wouldn't know what to think. Dani
Sorry to hear that Dani Racer that is a classic, I think I will mail that out to Household bank, who just graced me with an offer for their gold card LOL
NOT Making me blue... While the offer was squishy "0% for UP TO 15 months" on AMEX BLUE, I was appalled to find only four months of the intro rate available to me when the card arrived . I have good credit, I will just use it elsewhere. If I don't activate this, will it affect my credit?
That is a very good question. I suppose that even if you don't activate a card it will show up as a new account on the credit reports. If you don't activate/use it there will always be a 0/zero balance.
"Blue now assesses finance charges if you do not pay by the due date; not the statement date, but that stupid due date; that they put in little tiny print and give you a whole 15 days to pay." _________________________________ I thought they WERE due by the "due date" and not the statement date. Did I miss something?
No, you didn't. But remember that this thread was started six years ago. Maybe at that time some accounts had statement date and due date the same.
Obfuscation None of these publicly detailed discussions disprove the "bait and switch" of the advertised offer of "up to 15 months" and the real intro time or the obfuscatory tiny print of the due date. It is plain old shysterism and AMEX is guilty
"Up to 15 months" seems pretty clear to me. If you don't like the actual terms when you receive the card, just call them and tell them to close the account. I don't have an Amex card, but I don't understand what the big deal is about the due date. All of my creditors send me a monthly statement that clearly says "Date Due: xx/xx/xx" somewhere on it. Since I know how to read, I haven't had a problem paying the bills on time. (HSBC seems to have a bad habit of randomly changing the due date on occasion. So I never assume that just because it was due on the 20th last month, it's going to be due on the 20th next month.)
I agree. "Up to" means exactly that. Anything from zero to 15, but no more, depending on your credit report when they process the application. And I also agree that most credit cards clearly show a due date different from the closing date. The reason that it's not always on the 20th, for example, is that they probably use 30 days for payment, and of course when there are 31 days in a month, 30 days from a date will fall on a different date the next month.
Don't forget leap year,it throws everything off so you really have to read your statement.Because of there losses their are really tacking on the late fees even one second late
