Interesting Credit Card gimick…
It seems Chase has decided to make some accounts eligible for “skip a payment”. Unfortunately for me this morning I thought I missed a payment and called them while having a minor heart attack…
While it sounds like a good idea, here’s the problem with it. They have their website showing no payment due, with the due date shown. I was going through my finances this morning and discoverd my usual payments to Chase were missing, and one of them would have been past due. Usually I just go and make the rounds paying stuff online, and if it says $0 due, I figure I probably already paid it early or something and it just hasn’t shown up in the recent transactions. I’m sure I’m not the only one that does that, especially when you have to pay just the minimum on a couple cards for your budgeting. They failed (at least I think) to send me any notification that I was going to be eligible for this “skip a payment” deal. I do admit, I usually throw away stuff that looks like junk mail, and I get online statements because I never look at the paper ones (or online ones). So, if it was listed in one of those I didn’t see it. I download all my financial crap to Quicken and don’t really care to look at my statements. I’m sure there are a bunch of people that end up not making their usual payment because they didn’t know about this deal, and made the same assumptions I did. In turn Chase gets a little bit longer to charge more interest on a larger balance, and it makes it even sweeter for them if you have one of those “payment protector” plans on your card(s).
So, unless you don’t mind the extra interest and charges from stuff like payment protector on your cards, make sure you make that payment even though the website or phone/statement shows no payment due.
A friend of mine lost her Chase Visa card with a new one being issued. However, no statement showed on line and she waited. Anyway she missed the payment and tried to get the finance charges reversed. The only response was complete rudeness and take your business elsewhere, we don’t care what you think of us, etc. etc. This is far worse than trying to deal with other banks which are not that friendly either, i.e. Bank of America where I have my account. My friend is of course in the process of changing banks, but as a whole, employees of banks are rude as a whole.