"I Screwed Up!" FAQ - if you need help with bank/credit mistakes (finance charges, forgot payment,unclear terms etc

Squeezer99 said: PhrugalPhan said: One thing not mentioned, for all your non-0% CCs where you plan on paying it all off, but would like to wait until the last minute to pay, here is what I do. Make a minimum payment online right away, then pay the remainder right before its due. In case something happens where I miss the remaining payment, at least I won't get a "late payment" mark on my credit report. This is also the way to make your last payment for a 0% BT.

you have to be more then 30 days late before it will show up on your credit report
Geeze, I still have lots to learn. So does that mean you could be late with a CC payment and not worry about universal default on other cards, as long as you pay within a few weeks? Not that I plan on going that route, but that is interesting to hear.

Alright, as an update - I've got my DV letters all lined up, but then yesterday we found our receipt for the payment we made in 2005. After finding it, I was going to go ahead and send the letter, but with this receipt as an attachment. Now that I've got the proof that we paid and the account is closed, is there a different type of letter that should be sent instead? Because we've asked them to remove the account before (which they agreed to, but not in writing (only in email)), is this grounds for a suit? And lastly - because two years have passed since payment, will this situation have any lingering effects to my credit report even after its removal (sorta why I was wondering about the suit)? Thanks again everyone...

wyvernonfire said: Alright, I think this is the best place to throw this question, so here goes (warning, long post):

Late in 2005, I received a notice from a collection agency regarding some amount of money owed to a property mananagement company I was renting an apartment from in my college days. I validated the claim and immediately paid it off. They received my money order and faxed something to my former roommate (who was also on the account) and said they would take care of the credit report. Case closed... I thought.

Fast forward to June of this year: I'm married, and me and the wife are trying to get a place to live. While in that process, we find out that the account is still active. I contact the old property manager, and in their communication with the collection agency tell me that the collection agency sees that we've paid for the account and will try again to pull the account off my report. Case closed... I thought.

Fast forward again to Now: I applied for a credit card and was rejected... I used the opportunity to pull up a free credit report and saw that this account is still on my report and active... after contacting the collection agency, they're saying they have no record of me ever paying the amount and that unless I can prove I paid this off in 2005, they're going to keep that account active. Since 2005 and that first letter, no action has been taken by the collection agency to get in contact with me to collect...

Unfortunately for me, I can't get the fax from my roommate regarding the payment of the account, and I feel like I'm stuck having to pay the amount Again if I want this clear from my credit report.... I'm just wondering if anyone's had this sort of experiance before and how they took care of it, or if any gurus out there have any advice

TIA, sorry for the long post.
Wyvern

For 0% credit card arbitrage:
I like using recurring payments on my billpay rather than direct withdrawals. This way I have a single place to view past and future payments and compare against my current balance.

1. I keep my credit card arb funds in high yield savings (GMACbank.com)

2. Once a month I have my USAA checking pull enough from GMAC in one transfer to make all my payments for the month. This avoids the common maximum 6 withdrawals per month on many high yield savings account

3. My USAA checking is set to send out set amounts, a bit above the minimum, to each card for X months which I calculate based on when the offer expires. After 6 months I might lower the set amounts as paying off the balance lowers my minimums.

4. I set the payment dates conservatively at first and move them closer to the due date once I get a feel for how long it takes for payments to post.

5. I use the direct withdrawal ACH pull feature on each credit card site to make the final bulk repayment from my high yield savings. This avoids losing interest on a large amount, avoids USAA transfer limits on large amounts, and gives me greater assurance that this key payment will go through so I don't risk incurring interest.

For personal spending:
1. I set my bill pay to send $25 to each of the credit cards I use most often to meet the minimum payment in case I forget to pay. The interest charges on my personal spending if I'm a few days late are nothing compared to late fees.

2. I don't use autowithdraw because I like being able to see all my past and present payments in one place, although I might reconsider for cards that let me specify "pay the minimum" instead of a fixed amount. If I have to specify a fixed amount I'd rather use my bill pay

3. My personal checking is completely separate from my credit card arb checking. As are my personal credit card separated from my 0% arbitrage cards

Mistakes:
One day on a whim I added a second checking account to my Citi Credit Card ACH withdrawal and forgot about it (I didn't plan to use it but figured what's the harm in setting it up?).

I later broke from my normal "pay with checking billpay" procedure once and did a pull from the citi credit card site. I got a bounced payment because it didn't make it clear which of my two checking accounts it was pulling from and pulled from the wrong one (it had made the wrong one the default and I had forgotten I had two linked up).

I didn't notice the error until I got 2 overdraft fees since the Citi ACH pull tries to resubmit a day later if the first pull fails. (I actually noticed between the two charges but I couldnt deposit money fast enough to avoid the second overdraft). On top of it, Citi charged me a bounce fee after it gave up. So 2 fees from my bank and one from the credit card. Ouch.

So I like to keep complete control with bill pay and just automate that.

I have $25K BT money from BOFA at 0% rate. I am very cautious, so I manually pay the min payment online every month. This time, i got hit with a late fee stating that the payment was posted to another BOFA card instead. I am very diligent and pay few days in advance but they mentioned is my fault.
I asked them to transfer that payment to my other card. But they said it will take 7 days min. I asked them to speak with a manager, but they wont budge. They said they handle all calls and speaking with a manager is the last resource.
I know I will get hit finance charges, after reading other reviews. They may waive it for this statement but it will probably show up again. i hate them.

Alright, as an update - I've got my DV letters all lined up, but then yesterday we found our receipt for the payment we made in 2005. After finding it, I was going to go ahead and send the letter, but with this receipt as an attachment. Now that I've got the proof that we paid and the account is closed, is there a different type of letter that should be sent instead? Because we've asked them to remove the account before (which they agreed to, but not in writing (only in email)), is this grounds for a suit? And lastly - because two years have passed since payment, will this situation have any lingering effects to my credit report even after its removal (sorta why I was wondering about the suit)? Thanks again everyone...
Ok, if you found the reciept for payment, put that in a safe place. Send off the DV letter. Don't attach anything. That isn't your job. THEY made the claim, so THEY should be the ones to prove it. The only time you need to show the reciept is in court when you sue them for misrepresenting the amount of a debt.

Pleasew be careful with BofA Auto Pay! Set up so it will mess you up.

I would like to share with everyone an event that happened to me. I applied for about 20 cards for my AOR last month, 3 of them from Chase. The total new credit limit I received was about 150K. I finally got all cards last week, except 2 that were not approved. Then today I received a call from Chase and they told me they cancelled all my cards, because they did an account review and saw that I had excessive new credit line and many cards. Anybody else experiencing this with Chase?

OK, now I don't know what to do. I am thinking this will look bad on my credit report, most likely they will not report that the accounts were close at customer request. Would you please provide advice of how I should proceed (if at all)? Thnaks.

I'm not sure this is a pure "I screwed up" situation, but there was an error on my part that is now biting me big time in that WAMU has closed my rebate mastercard and declared my $667 rebate is "forfeit". Looking for advice on whether there is any opportunity for me to get my rebate.

WAMU gave me a very low CL of $2500 on this card, resulting in my making about 5 payments per month using the online payment transfer from my checking account to keep the balance managed. I never went over limit.

I also had autopay setup to pay the full balance on the due date.

All was going well, more or less (if you ignore the major hassle of having to check the web site and submit an online payment about twice per week), and the rebate credit was stacking up.

Then in January I opened a Fidelity MySmart Cash checking account and started the process of moving all of my autopays for utilities, credit cards, mortgage, etc. over to the Fidelity account. Well when I setup the WAMU mastercard payment I must have fat fingered the account number. The first two payments I put through came back as rejected. On Jan 22 I called customer service, figured out I had the wrong checking account number, fixed it, and started successfully making payments from the Fidelity checking account. While I was on the phone with the WAMU CSR on Jan 22 I asked to get a check cut for my $667 in rebate, she said sure, it will come with my Feb bill.

Then today...at the grocery store the mastercard was declined. Checked the web site, it says available credit is 0, called in and was told my account has been closed and my rebate is forfeit due to returned payments. Well as you can imagine I am a bit perturbed, to put it mildly.

So where does this leave me? Facts are:

Account was never at or over limit
Always paid in full every month
My FICO score over 800
I had autopay still setup and pointing to my credit union checking account when all this went down, so even if my account had a balance on the payment due date (it didn't), WAMU could have pulled funds to cover from the checking account that was working
CSR said "no problem" cutting my rebate check even after the failed payments when I spoke to her on Jan 22
WAMU has no way to "test" that a new account is valid for auto-pay on the Mastercard. Interesting point: my mortgage is also with WAMU, and they *do* perform a test post of $0 on the mortgage payment to validate the account is setup correctly, so its not like WAMU couldn't do this on the Mastercard side of their business.

Do they close everyone's account when an autopay account # has a typo? I suspect not...the cynic in me thinks WAMU was looking for any opportunity to stop honoring their agreement with me and avoid the need to pay out over $600 in rebate.

Yes I made an error in setting up the new checking account. Yes the agreement says my account will be in default if "any payment item is returned unpaid" (I might argue it wasn't returned unpaid...there were funds to cover...the payment was invalid) or "any information you give us proves to be incomplete or false"

Do I take my lumps and whine about my experience and how much WAMU sux0rs, or do I have a prayer of appealing and getting my rebate?

After writing a detailed letter to the president of WAMU card services, they agreed to re-open my account and send me a check for my rebate. Phew!

Can anybody confirm that making a late payment on a Chase credit card will not affect the 0% apr on a separate Citi card? I noticed another member's question go unanswered earlier and I had the same question. As long as you make a payment a few days after being late on a card, you won't get a universal late payment default and have the APR of all other cards go up correct? TIA

jimbot said: Can anybody confirm that making a late payment on a Chase credit card will not affect the 0% apr on a separate Citi card? I noticed another member's question go unanswered earlier and I had the same question. As long as you make a payment a few days after being late on a card, you won't get a universal late payment default and have the APR of all other cards go up correct? TIA
The short answer is that a late payment on a Chase credit card shouldn't affect your 0% APR on your Citi card. The term is "universal default". If you Google "universal default" Citibank, you will eventually find Reuters - Citigroup eases credit card rate-rise policies.

The other consideration is that most creditors won't report a payment to a Credit Bureau until it's at least 30 days late, so I wouldn't think Citi would even know about a payment with Chase that was only a few days late.

MaddHatter said: So as any self-respecting FW'er would do, I get my due date and make a note to go back in the day or two before and submit the payment. Actually, a self-respecting FW'er would schedule a push payment using their checking account's BillPay feature.

Glitch99 said: MaddHatter said: So as any self-respecting FW'er would do, I get my due date and make a note to go back in the day or two before and submit the payment. Actually, a self-respecting FW'er would schedule a push payment using their checking account's BillPay feature.

Touche.
In my case, my CU charged for billpay when I looked into it....about 5 years ago. Perhaps that's my bad.

US Bank rep, after putting me on hold, claimed she reversed the fee and I should see it posted in the next few days. She said I "shouldn't" lose my 0% (something about it being less than 5 days late), but couldn't guarantee it and basically said if I had charges on my next statement I could call back in about them being removed (my whole point being I was fine with the 0% being pulled, but I felt it was fair to know about it in advance to plan accordingly).

I'm usually very careful about handling my finances, but even so, I've slipped up. The below is only my experience, and I was extremely fortunate to emerge unscathed from these screwups. My apologies for the lengthy post.

I posted on this elsewhere, but I missed a payment by a couple of days on my Chase Sony card, which was in the middle of a 0% BT offer. I was lucky enough to not suffer any adverse consequences such as my rate getting jacked up, paying a ton of interest based on the late payment and the size of the BT, and Chase was kind enough to even reverse the late fee. I've since paid the BT off near the end of its 12-month term. For the record, I've found it best if I speak with a supervisor (who might have more options than a front-line CSR), take full responsibility for my mistake (and sincerely cop to my stupidity in making the mistake), and ask for a one-time exception.

I have to respectfully disagree with SIS about autopayments, at least in situations like this, when one has an AOR with a number of cards. While I agree that one should *always* scrutinize one statements, if I get hit by a bus (this seems a popular payment-stopping example mentioned in FWF), I don't want my wife to freak out when all these bills start going delinquent. True, if I die, I can't take my credit reports with me, but what if I live?

Furthermore, if I live and my wife is saddled with all this debt and delinquency while I'm recovering, I might wish the bus had taken me out for good.

And now for two biggies for which I'm glad this forum is anonymous. They even share a common theme.

1. A late mortgage payment. I did everything right when I went to the screen to make my payment a few days before the end of the grace period, even printing the payment screen for my records -- except click on the Transfer button. Another example of something that should be put on auto-pay and now is.

When I checked my online banking a few days after the end of the grace period, I noticed there was no sign of the mortgage payment. That's when I discovered what had happened. I immediately contacted the lender (PenFed), paid the amount plus late fee, and asked what impact this would have on my credit. The supervisor told me that as long as the delinquency didn't extend beyond the end of the month (the 15th was the last day of the grace period), there would be no late designation reported to the credit bureaus. So far, so good.

But there was another concern. A potential lender can apparently scrutinize your mortgage payment history and see exactly when the payments were made (and I suspect that a late fee was paid). I really didn't want that, especially in these days of tightening credit and more stringent underwriting. I found out that with management approval, PenFed could backdate my payment, and the late fee either refunded or applied to the mortgage principle. So I ended up getting my payment date backdated, and put an extra $100 or so into my mortgage principle.

2. I overdrew my Citi checking account by $45K. In this case, I missed the transfer step from a MM account to my checking account. So the check gets deposited to my BoA checking account, the funds instantly made available, and I make a rather large credit card payment. This happened in the latter part of a week. Early the following week, I see my Citi account is overdrawn and a NSF Fee was assessed, all freshly posted to the Citi checking account.

I called a CSR who basically said that the check would be returned -- according to her, Citi wouldn't cover a check exceeding a certain amount -- and that I'd be reported to ChexSystems. I asked to speak with a supervisor and received slightly different information. After having her do the transfer I should have done, she told me that their usual policy was that the check would get returned, it would be put through again, and only if the second try failed, I'd get reported to ChexSystems. I was also told that they could reverse the NSF Fee as a one-time courtesy.

So I put enough funds in my BoA account to cover the check being returned to Citibank and monitored the accounts (as I usually do anyway). After a full week of not seeing those funds leaving BoA and going back to Citi, I called another supervisor. It turns out that Citi paid the $45K check to BoA after all. The supervisor then reversed my NSF fee and confirmed that there'd be no impact either on ChexSystems or my banking relationship with Citi.

My conclusions: Be vigilant, use autopay where appropriate, always talk with a supervisor or manager when matters of importance arise, admit responsibility for your mistakes, and always be courteous. Did I say be vigilant?