I was late paying my credit card bill in October 2009 by one day. I have not been late paying for a few years running. A $39 late fee appeared on my next statement. I did not like it and I thought it was nitpicking because of one lousy day, but I was late after all. January 2010 statement and my interest rate was hiked an additional 14%. My jaw nearly dropped to the floor.
What's going on? Why did my APR go through the roof all of a sudden? My questions were directed toward the customer service representative. She told me it was because I was late in October. I was frustrated and she was frustrated as well. Apparently, her training was limited to offering cash rewards to customers.
My credit card company was obviously trying to beat the February 22, 2010 deadline where banks could no longer raise interest rates unexpectedly on late payments less than 60 days. I made sure to remind them of this as often as I could.
The bank finally caved-in in April and returned my APR to original pre-January 2010 levels. I am a cardholder in good standings and I bugged them every chance I got. This large multi-national bank realized they were being excessive. Well, the customer service manager blamed it on the software. It's all automated. It wasn't our decision Yeah right. It was their decision to program the software though.
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