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?