Discover reported mid-cycle balance instead of statement balance - a little bit pissed off :-(

[mikka1]

I read stories like this here not a long ago, but still it was quite unexpected.

My Discover statement cut is on the 12th of each month. I PIFed it a couple of days before the date to report 0 balance on this card (I have 3 other cards reporting balance, so I wanted to improve it a little bit to be better positioned for applying for a new card) and made sure that I have 0 balance in my December statement.

After that I have been doing some online shopping in December, specifically on the 22nd with extra 2% CB, checking my CK in parallel to see if 0 balance is reported. 

It has been still reporting my previous statement balance until now. 

10 minutes ago I checked it again - it has updated and it shows ~$50 balance. Discover just randomly chose a date (maybe yesterday or day before yesterday) and reported _current_ balance instead of last statement balance (which was $0). If they waited 3-4 more days, they could have reported much higher balance as not all of transactions from 12/22 have posted so far.

It's obviously not the end of the world and definitely not a dealbreaker for my score, but I just don't see a reason to PIF it before the statement cut anymore as it can randomly report any mid-cycle balance. I just find this practice quite strange - I will now be much more cautious with big ticket shopping on this card...

... or I maybe should just forget about all this stuff and keep using the card in a way 99% of cardholders do :-)

[Walt_K]

Did you take any action on the account such as changing an address, phone number, etc., requesting a CLI, disputing anything?   

[mikka1]

Not ones you listed.

I added 1 more AU and ordered a new design (as I plan to switch to Discover It in a couple of weeks).

But I've done similar things several times before (adding AU etc) and it never actually resulted in mid-cycle reporting. I haven't asked for one as well.

[Walt_K]

I wouldn't be surprised if one of these things triggered it. 

When you added AU before, how long ago?  Maybe it was before people started reporting mid-cycle reporting, i.e., maybe before Discover started doing this.  Alternatively, are you sure it didn't report the previous time you added an AU?  Do you know what the balance was before and after adding AU and do you monitor that closely?

Could have also been because of card design change as well, though that seems odd.  Adding AU would seem a more likely triggering event.

My general sense from seeing these threads is that there is usually some type of activity on the account that would explain the extra reporting.  If it were a larger change in policy by Discover, i.e., if they were reporting all accounts twice a month now, I would expect to see a lot more threads like this.  Instead you usually see multiple people confirming that their Discover card is still reporting statement balance.  If you remember, please report back what Discover does on your account next month.  It would be interesting to know if it reverts to a normal reporting cycle. 

[mikka1]

Might well be, but what surprises me most is that it was not _extra_ reporting - they basically have not reported anything right after the statement cut.

I simply haven't ever experienced reporting random current balance before, that's it. It just looked like they woke up in the end of the month saying "da*n, it's the end of December already and we forgot to report his December statement balance to CRAs - let's do it right now with his current one" :-)

[nick125]

They do the same thing to me. I had some charges post the day after my statement closed and they reported that balance instead of the statement balance. I didn't do any CLIs, adding AUs, or anything to trigger them. 

[nicholasyud]

we all need to complain discover about this situation.....