January 23,2009
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Your Story: Deception Exposed, Pt.2
– ‘Already Overdue'.One more ‘insufficient notice' near-miss. Respondent, ‘IBFRANK' brings out a ‘gotcha' that many of us have experienced: The perils of ‘late holiday-mail'. By the time the credit card statement arrives, the ‘payment due date' is only a few days away. As in so many cases, this family had already learned this lesson the hard way a year earlier and was able to stop the credit card late payment damage in time this year. The longer credit card ‘grace-period' that Congress is mandating may fix this problem. But, until the extension, it's good for the ‘not-yet-victims' to note that delays in snail mail can cause short-term grace periods' to expire before the mail arrives over a holiday. On-line credit card monitoring is probably the best way to avoid this loss until the new government mandates are in place.
Moving on to the more serious situations where the credit card payment is ‘Already Overdue'. ‘lightfep' writes in to add another unpleasant testimony of the several occasions when the Chase statement didn't arrive in time to even make the payment on time no matter what. Upon calling Chase on the phone, ‘lightfep' was advised to set up automatic payments (more on these later). Then end result was that dissatisfaction overcame usefulness and the credit card simply isn't used any more.
The ‘already overdue' complaint seems to be the most damaging in various forms. It seems that some credit card lenders (like Citigroup) have a propensity for advancing payment due dates without sufficient warning. ‘1909stockbroker' recently experienced this detriment when the date was moved up five days. Upon opening the statement, found that the credit card payment was already overdue. There is no explanation of the outcome but, it's safe to say that this honest and responsible person was deceived and has cause to be upset.