Paying attention to your credit accounts

Many of you know my thoughts on credit cards (and banks in general). They're evil. There is simply no way around it.

Here's what is prompting today's post.

I have all of my recurring business expenses charged to one specific credit card. It makes my end of the year tax work much simpler. Each month anywhere from 2,000 to 3,500 bucks are put on this account. When the statement comes, I pay the balance off in full. The credit card company hates this.

The interest rate on this account was 9.9%. Not the lowest on earth, but it really doesn't matter to me since I pay the balance off every month.

A few things have recently happened.

1 - my grace period was reduced. Now instead of 30 days, it is 12 days. That means that I'm almost always paying interest on my purchases, because the grace period is up before the statement even comes.

2 - the electronic statements used to be sent 10-15 days before payment is due. That recently changed to 2-3 days. So if I'm not paying attention, it can be really easy to make a late payment.

In fact I did have a late payment...a payment was due 2 days after the statement was emailed to me. This resulted in a $39 late fee, and my interest rate going to the default rate of 28%.

I called and discussed this issue with a customer representative, who happily removed the charge from my account. She would not, however, change my interest rate back to the 9.9% that I had. She said I was late, and although she could remove the charge she could not change that I was not responsible enough to pay the bill on time.

You can imagine what was going through my mind when she said that.

I asked her how long it would take for the rate to go back down, she said 6 months. So, even after not having a late payment for six years, I had to wait 6 months for it to go back down. Now remember, they have also reduced the grace period - so now I'm paying nearly 30% interest on some portion of my balance.

So I got this great idea - I set up automatic payments of $50 every two weeks. In an effort to make sure I never have a late payment again, and to reduce any interest I am paying.

Great in theory. But, the credit card company responded by not sending statements AT ALL anymore. When I inquired about this, they indicated to me that they only send statements on accounts that have a payment due. My payments are made in advance, so I never have a payment due.

Pretty slick huh.

Does anyone really wonder why consumers are screaming for reform????