I have read somewhere or heard that it costs about $3 to prepare and mail a paper bill. However, I am skeptical of that figure with the economies of scale these large issuers enjoy. They get discounted postage, buy their envelopes wholesale, and the entire mailing is almost completely computer generated and automated. I did enjoy letting Juniper bank bill me for a recurring monthly charge of $4.95 for almost 3 years after they annoyed me by trying to withhold rebates that were due me. Ah my, the days when you could charge US savings bonds, good times.

On my MBNA AAA card, I had a $2.02 balance. It did NOT get credited. Worse yet, this was when MBNA was getting switched to BofA, so the online banking system was down. I ended up using MyEasyPayment.com to pay, and the lowest I could pay using that site was $20.00

Haha, guess it doesn't hurt to have a $17.98 positive balance

WalStMonky said:My charge of $3.14 to the Chase Sony card was billed.
Yes, Pi must be the solution!

scott1961 said:Funny reading this thread and seeing people trying to nickel and dime free money on a card. Could come back to haunt you someday. Maybe the issuer rejects you for a new card or a small payment you thought got written off goes as a late payment and crashes your score.

Not even the proverbial snowball's chance of the above. These credits are plainly printed on the statement. You may as well say that payments made and credited could come back to bite you. Red for you for being an alarmist with no basis whatever.

WalStMonky said:scott1961 said:Funny reading this thread and seeing people trying to nickel and dime free money on a card. Could come back to haunt you someday. Maybe the issuer rejects you for a new card or a small payment you thought got written off goes as a late payment and crashes your score.

Not even the proverbial snowball's chance of the above. These credits are plainly printed on the statement. You may as well say that payments made and credited could come back to bite you. Red for you for being an alarmist with no basis whatever.
Not sure how you can say that it will not affect getting another card from the issuer. when I recently applied for another card from Chase I asked for a high CL, They told me the highest my balance ever was on my other card was like $1,200 and this made it a bit more difficult to get the CL I was looking for. Point is they had all my info on my old card while I was trying to get the new one. Not saying that having that happen once is going to hurt you but we have people here wanting to find a way to do this over and over again. I would not want an issuer seeing a repeated pattern of this on me Plus I think I would feel like some sort of charity case having them write off a couple dollar charge. good chance I am completely wrong but the rewards are not worth even taking the smallest risk that something negative could come out of it

WalStMonky said:scott1961 said:Funny reading this thread and seeing people trying to nickel and dime free money on a card. Could come back to haunt you someday. Maybe the issuer rejects you for a new card or a small payment you thought got written off goes as a late payment and crashes your score.

Not even the proverbial snowball's chance of the above. These credits are plainly printed on the statement. You may as well say that payments made and credited could come back to bite you. Red for you for being an alarmist with no basis whatever.

As long as you can confirm the credit card issuer zero'd the balance. Don't just assume that if you get a bill for a couple of dollars, that you shouldn't bother paying it, and wait until it's a bit bigger. The bank might not care, but the way their computers are programmed, a late payment in a given month is a late payment, no matter how small. It can get reported to the credit bureaus, really hurting your score. So pay those small bills!

Advanta cancelled a $1.00 charge for me.

Call me cheap - but I often do this with some of my cards. For example one of my chase cards carries a BT at close to 90% of its $37k line and I have 3 other chase cards that I don't use. So once a month when I'm at a gas station I pump gas for $1.99 on each one of them. The bill always prints at $0.00 as chase issues what they call a "credit adjustment".

Same goes for discover - I have one card w/ 0% for life of balance and the second card stays dormant. So I use that one in the same way - balances up to $1.99 get cancelled with a "small balance credit". Last month I overshot and got exactly $2.00 balance - and this one didn't get cancelled.

I know that none of the citi cards cancel the balances - once I had a $0.25 balance and it got billed.

Do I feel bad? Not really - it keeps my cards active, it keeps them at 0% utilization and it nets a few bucks a month. It's not much, but people have done much more work to get much less in return.

BTW - I have electronic statements on all these cards - so paper/electronic doesn't make a difference.

I've NEVER had ANY balance cancelled by a cc issuer in my life.

I know that there's a Citi 0% card out there that necessitates two purchases/month to keep the 0% rate. Someone advocated charging a pack of gum twice a month or arranging small charges from PayPal. Perhaps folks with this card should make sure that their charges are over $2 each.

Yes, and they charged interest against the ADB