Dammit! Forgot to pay my MasterCard bill

Shit shit shit and more shit. Never got a statement for this month, and with the MG clan all sick with pneumonia and stomach viruses and dropping in at emergency, the thing KINDA slipped my mind.

Where DOES mail disappear to?...Of course, considering that I found a piece of my neighbor's mail on the sidewalk in front of my house (not on our front walk, but on the SIDEWALK), I figure our mail carrier is cousin to the dude in Better Off Dead who blasted tunes on his Walkman while dropping fistfuls of mail behind him.

Crossing fingers that Bank of America won't increase our interest rate (they've been pretty good about that when I've had the rare "whoopsie" with this account over the past 15 or so years I've had it)...that would suck out loud... :( :( :(

Oh crud. I guess that's Mercury retrograde in action! D'oh!

"I never got my statement".

This I can tell you from working for a large credit card company (no it's not Bank of America, it's not Visa, it's not MasterCard and it's not Discover. Guess what's left?). The customer care agents I train are told that when a card member calls in and states that they have not received their statement that any late fees are to be credited, if they normally pay their bills in full and got hit with a finance charge that the finance charge is to be credited and if there are any negative marks (30 days past due etc) that they are to be expunged from the record. Oh and if the interest rate has gone up then it has to be brought back down too. Not all of them are checking everything out 100% so it is wise that when you get copies of statements and future statements and this happens that they have done the necessary corrections and follow up if needs be. It's all down in the Fair Credit Billing Act. Credit Card companies are bound by it and some follow it more strictly then others.

Depending on who you get you might get a mini-lecture about payment and you will more than likely be told about the benefits of going online and checking out your account there. The company I work for offer the ability to get email alerts when statements come out and another email alert when payment is due. The answer to this is say something like "I don't go online" as a rebuttal or "i don't have a computer". Credit card companies are bound by law to print out a statement, mail it to you, expect a certain amount of time for you to read it and turn around a payment. Some say 20 days, some say 25 or even 30.

I hope this helps.

Mark.

I truly, truly did not get my statement, so that would be the gods' honest truth. I sent BofA a message online after I made my payment tonight saying just that, but I will also call them on Monday to make sure it's fixed.

BofA is really big into online statements and online payments, and they do push that a lot, so it's nice to know they're bound by law to send paper statements unless we opt out.

Thank you SO MUCH, Mark--that is a load off my mind! :hug:

Just like you said, Mark! Late fee removed, no increase in interest rate. Thanks for the reassuring words while I was freaking out. :hi:

On the weekends, you get India. Gone down this road before, and on Saturdays and Sundays, especially at night, it's useless. The only way I'd call now is if I lost my card.

I think a payment made online and a message through the site can hold me over till Monday morning. I hope, anyway! :)

at my job I talk to people in India all night long, sometimes for 12 hours straight :(

Mr. MG does freelance work for his former employer (programming), and he has conference calls with the outsource crew in India his former boss has hired. He says he still has a heck of a time following the conversation.

they will more than likely waive the late fee. It's doubtful they'd raise your interest rate unless you were late more than once in a 3-6 month period.

I have my checking, savings, and a credit account with a bank NOTORIOUS for lining up overdraft and late fees left and right, but I've also found that they are really willing to work with you. Recently, I wrote a check for my Discover bill (instead of paying it online like I have in the past), and I forgot to write the dang thing in my checkbook. The check cleared this week three days before payday and left me with an overdraft too large for my overdraft protection to cover. Of course, they processed that check first, then all the piddly little debit card charges - monthly newspaper subscription, coffee, a prescription, little crap like that. The result? TEN overdraft fees. Yessir, ten of 'em.

So I called the bank. Yes, the oversight was my fault, but the initial few overdraft fees caused additional overdraft fees when additional authorizations were paid. The upshot is that they reversed all but one of the overdraft fees. I figured I deserved the one for forgetting to write down that blasted check to Discover. :)

Three or four years ago, we went something like a four-month period without receiving any billing for a large purchase we made at Best Buy; as a result, I kept getting a call every month that our payment was past due. They had our correct address in their system, and neither party could come up with an explanation for why the statements weren't arriving. They waived the late fees, we paid off the charge within the same-as-cash time period, and didn't charge anything at Best Buy again.

When I was young and stupid and my mind was on other things (it was my first year teaching high school--yikers), my car registration expired and I didn't notice. I didn't get a reminder in the mail (this was when you had to go to the DMV to renew--you couldn't do it by mail) and I went blithely about my business with an expired registration on my car window for months...till a cop pulled me over when I was home visiting my parents. I truly had no clue. Got a ticket and all, yadda yadda. When I called the DMV to find out what happened, it turned out that when I submitted a change of address, they changed my street name but not my city. :eyes: Still had to pay the damned ticket, though. I think it was $85. Small change nowadays, but at the time, it was really painful.

I've been a model customer for 16 years, and a few of those years I had both a BofA account and an MBNA account at the same time (till BofA bought MBNA). I think I had a brain fart and forgot to pay my bill two or three times in all those years (one I can blame on post-partum insanity). So I'm hoping they'll have mercy on me and not raise the rate.

You're right that rates get raised less often than we think.

And you have my utmost sympathy about overdrafts! That tale takes me back, when Mr. MG and I were first married and dead broke--we did the same thing! I can't believe we made it through our first couple of years of marriage with stresses like that, I really don't!
:rofl:

...but many moons ago when I missed a BoA payment on accident, my rate went up to nearly 20%. :(

I got a response to my e-mail today that said they were removing the late fee, which is a relief. I need to check about my interest rate though.

...and explain to them that if a one-time slip merits such drastic measures on their part, you'll be transferring your balance to a different card and stopping use of their card.

The last thing they want is for you not to have a balance, and they'll generally do what they need to in order to keep your business.

Five figures, baby (UGH)--don't mess with that kinda interest-based income, right?

The e-mail did say they were removing the late fee because I was such a stellar customer. That means "we enjoy the balance you carry", sure as shootin'.

but forgot to rip it out from the checkbook and enclose it in the envelope. They waived the late fee, surprisingly.

Doncha just hate when you have a brain fart like that? Man, when I was going through post-partum insanity from general new-baby craziness, I forgot all kinds of stuff. I forgot to make our payment to Chase once--called them and swore up and down that we never got the statement...and then I found it stuffed in our bills file. I had apparently opened it, looked at it, and stuffed it in with our receipts and payment stubs without actually paying it. Lack of sleep is a dangerous thing.

But I have a great excuse too with the health problems I've been overcoming. And, yes, lack of sleep also goes with this territory.