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Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:36 pm Subject: This one takes the cake

OK - In my field of work I hear alot of shocking things but this one takes the cake. I got a call from one of my credit card companies. Back in Feb. I set up a payment plan with them. They sent me payment stubs for my monthly payments. So - whenever I got extra money, I would send in a payment with my payment stub. I didn't have the money this month so they call me and say - where is your May payment. Now according to my payment stubs, I am paid up until October. I explained to the woman that I have been sending my payments in. She said I could not do that. I can send in extra money in but I can not pay my monthly payment ahead of time.

Does that sound sort of silly to anyone else. I don't know. Maybe not. But it sounded sort of stupid to me.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:41 pm Subject:

Yes that sounds totally crazy...I have never heard of such a thing....did you make any notation on your extra payments saying to apply it to the principal amount?

I know it shouldn't matter but it usually does. My husband was sending in extra money to get his escrow account for taxes down to $0.00 and he didn't note on their that was what he was doing and they applied it to his principal.

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:44 pm Subject:

Yes, ladybug is right, if you don't make a note of it what the extra money is for, they won't consider it a payment. Confused

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:52 pm Subject:

The thing is, I purposely sent each payment seperately in the enevolpes they provided with the payment stubs. So for example, if I sent in two payments in at the same time, they would have received them seperately, with two different checks and with two seperate paystubs.

I don't know go figure. I just guess if the do want to take me to court because I miss a payment, any judge would laugh them out of court when I am paying over $1000/month which is more than twice of what I owe a month.

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:57 pm Subject:

I know what you mean. Something similar happened to me, and I was livid, but since I didn't specify what the monies were for, they refused to accept it as a payment. Boy was I furious! Mad

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 3:59 pm Subject:

Well, I am still going to send in as much as I can each month. This way I will get them off my back sooner than later. Only this time, I will know to send in at least one payment a month.

Dang - why have I done this to myself.

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:02 pm Subject:

SPatterson, have you read your card contract? Anything in there about this???

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:05 pm Subject:

Well it went into in-house collections and this is a settlement agreement in lieu of going to court. It the court papers say that I will pay the $400 monthly.

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 5:28 pm Subject:

Because credit cards are a revolving balance, any payments you make only apply to that statement period; they will never carry forward to future payments.

Suppose I charge $600 on my credit card; they may send me a statement saying the minimum due is $20. If I send in a $500 payment, that doesn't mean I don't have to pay for another 25 months; it just brings down my overall balance, and I would still have to pay something next month.

However, the more you pay now, the less interest they will charge in the long run. So making those extra payments really didn't go for naught.

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 5:38 pm Subject:

Oh I didn't catch that it was a legal issue. You filed the settlement agreement with the court? In that case, I couldn't really say that it's a revolving balance anymore.

Having an agreement for a set balance and set monthly payments is more of an installment contract. Usually with installment contracts, extra payments are applied toward future payments; so you could make six payments at once and then not have to pay for six months.

In a case like this, I don't know what category it fits into (quasi-revolving-turned-installment?) I'm not sure whether paying extra is required to bump the due day; it all depends on what laws they have to follow.

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