Anyone else been experiencing CREDIT CARD hassles?

I never carry a lot of debt on my card and basically use cash as much as I can. But of course for ordering online and other purposes a card is a necessary evil.

Over the past 6 months I've had tons of trouble PAYING my monthly credit card bill. I don't mean in terms of scraping the cash together, but literally PAYING it: at least 3 times during this period my checks have been rejected for no good reason. First they claimed that I didn't put my card number on it (falsely). Then they claimed they never got my payment, even though I mailed it. I also noticed a wide varience in the time it takes for them to credit my account: One month the check goes through a few days after I mail it, the next month it doesn't go throughg except after a protracted delay (leading to late fees for me even though I sent it on time as always). Then to top it off, in the months when they screw up, they keep pestering me with these verging-on-harrassing phone calls.

This seems to be a recent (as in within the last half-year to a year) phenomenon. I don't have any idea what the freaking malfunction is -- I mail my checks on time correctly as always, as I have been doing for decades. I hypothesize the following. Either:
-They are deliberately "losing" the checks to generate extra late fees and higher interest rate;
-Their system is all snarled up due to the financial chaos and they are simply making honest mistakes because they are overworked and (perhasps) understaffed after payroll cuts; or
-Somebody in the post office or along the way is either deliberately screwing with me or making mistakes.

Being the conspiracy loon I am, I vote option #1. It makes a twisted sort of immoral "sense" and given the corruption in the financial world it wouldn't suprise me at all.

Does any of this sound familiar? If this is happening en masse I don't know what to do...nobody is going to go to court over a few hundered dollars or whatever, but if they are doing this delibrately it makes me mad as hell.

This month I paid off the whole thing and I now have a negative balance. I am simply going to leave it like that and I will NOT use their card EVER AGAIN because these shenanagins cause me endless trouble over literal nickels and dimes, and the mess is probably screwing with my credit rating to boot.

MAD AS ALL GIT OUT!!!

reply to post by silent thunder


they do it so you will give up and have to pay various fees - its called creative revenue stream - it all depends on how much you are willing to fight it all - I suggest paying off your card and trying pre paid...

Like it or not the intent is to get fees out of you - speaking from experience.

GOODLUCK~

Silent Thunder

They only nickel and dime you? Or are you meaning they only hundred dollar billed you. They got me that way, i'm scared to even attempt a prepaid card, cash for me.

Even my bank has opened up new features that are charging me, at least once I week I have to go and cancel it and pay yet another fee for canceling something I NEVER even signed up for.

It's getting ridiculous, if they want money so bad, they should do what everyone else is doing.

Get a bailout.

reply to post by silent thunder


Yes I have big time. We are never late on our bills and in the past two months I had issues with 2 different cards. One card is our normal card we get airline miles on. They told us we had not made a payment yet our autopay from our bank had been taken out about 10 days earlier. They argued with me on the phone forever about it. I'm closing this account.

The second time was I bought an alienware PC and had about 1200 bucks left to pay on it but it was zero percent so figured we would just pay the regular payments. They called us and said we were now behind on our bill and had not paid them in over a month. My wife does the bills so I asked her when we paid and it was all normal. I call them back and they said that we paid the 2 days earlier then we should have so we missed one months payment and made 2 payments the month previous. I didn't know that my wife about 10 days after that had sent them a check for the rest of the bill to just get rid of it and the people told me I needed to make another payment on the phone. I told them we had already mailed off the full balance and they had already gotten this months payment. Needless to say it took me like 40 minutes to get them to finally credit the lay fee and admit that they should have just counted for the correct month. We have the account closed out and I won't use them again.

Buyers beware because they will try and jack your rates and get you into late fees these days.

Capital One by any chance??? Notice my last post on this thread
www.abovetopsecret.com...

My mom has been getting scammed with bogus "late" fee interest charges as well, different card company.

My theory is they are in dire straights and performing money grabs on there way to collapse.

I stared your thread, people need to keep a close eye on there statements. I am also interested in how wide spread this is.

They are causing trouble with check writers as a means to pressure you to pay online. It is significantly cheaper for them to remove paper from the process.

Citibank did that to me and I shut my card down.

Thanks everyone for your input. It is as I expected. They are deliberately doing this.

In answer to Republican08, its not so much that they are mis-charging me (thankfully that has never happened) but rather they are delaying and messing up the payment process so I end up getting charged late fees.

Actually this thread and your similar tales of wie motivated me to actual action. Not five minutes ago I got off the phone after CANCELLING the danged thing. Now I am a free man! Creditless but debtless. I suppose I can do without Amazon for awhile and I'll buy iTunes gift certificates with cash when I need to. The rest I can handle with cash; I don't travel much so I don't really have to worry about car rentals and airplanes. No more credit! Wheeeee! I feel liberated. Maybe I'll get a debit card down the road but I am enjoying my decidedly odd status as one of the few Americans without a credit card too much at the moment to think about that.

"Creative revenue streaming"
In other words, we are up their creek with nary a paddle in sight!!
Yes..the best course of action is not to participate in any system where everyone
cheats!!
Was glad to read the other posts here about the level of "harassment".
Pay off and cancel those cards for sure!!!!

I do not own a credit card but my dad has a few. He's been hassled this way also, when paying by check. One month they even sent him a bill for almost 2k... he didn't spend it and when he called them up they said someone bought a big screen in New Jersey (I live in LA). They told him he must have purchased it because they swiped the card... which is impossible. He promptly canceled that card not sure if they made him pay or not, I'll have to ask.

You do not have to pay them back , after all if you are keeping up on current threads you would realize that the credit card company did not lend you that money, they created it, and are charging you interest on the money they created out of thin air..

So if you pay them back the money you are actually helping to inflate the economy.

And you would not want to be responsible for inflating the economy now would you ! ??? Give them 5 dollars a month and tell them to have a nice day.

It is essential to keep excellent records. I do most of my banking online to avoid hassles, but I have been a victim of auto-pay features magickally deactivating. This is troublesome, because I don't keep up on a lot of my bills, since they just automatically get paid every month.

I have had a lot of success with paypal, it integrates very well with your bank account. So if you want to make a purchase online, you can pay with paypal, and paypal will withdraw the necessary amount directly from your bank account for the transaction. Plus, it's free for consumers. The merchant is the one who gets dinged a small percentage for using paypal.

Just a suggestion.

reply to post by silent thunder


Sorry to hear of your problems and trust me you are not alone out there millions of Americans are finding harder and harder to pay their bills and that is not only credit cards.

My husband and I only hold two credit cards and one is only for business so we do not have problems with them at least "yet".