Macy's credit - Looking for help! $2.00 interest charge after paid in full!

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,  I need help.  So I had a balance of $149.21 due 4/13 on my Macy's card.  I paid the balance in full on 4/1.  I can never pay online or view statment.  Their online does not work, always had to pay over the phone.  For this reason I paid it in full to avoid this issue and said I would never use the card again.  Well today I recieved a call from Macy's collection department saying I owe them $8.00 and my account was 90 days past due. I was like **bleep** I paid that in full?  Well I guess they charged me a $2.00 interest charge every month.  I just paid it and the supervisor that I complained to said there was nothing she can do and that the credit department could report my account past due on the credit reports.  Can someone give me advice on what to do?  This is completely like a scam and I am in the middle of building a new home.  Please help!

[Friarchuck]

Most lenders use the "average daily balance" method to calculate interest. I assume this balance was part of a balance that was carried over from a previous statement? What will happen is that they will take the average balance of the previous 30 days and apply your APR to that number, which will then be applied to your account a few weeks after the due date on which the balance was due. They call this "trailing interest". This is kind of like a "trap" to ensure that you keep paying them because it is extremely tempting to just pay the lingering balance to 0 and then forget about it, but most of my credit card agreements explain exactly how it works and it is the normal way for them to operate.

[Anonymous]

Yikes, OP. I'm sorry. I don't have any advice really but it is for reasons just like this that I obsessively check my accounts multiple times a week, just to be triple sure I have not missed anything. I am still re-building after tanking my credit in my 20's and can ill afford any kind of late payments reporting.

For example, I had a $0.99 balance on my AMEX that carried over. I checked the acct many times via my app and, since the font was so small and the numbers looked so similar, I thought it was saying I had a $0.00 minimum payment due. Made sense to me, I didn't think there would be a minimum payment on a $0.99 balance.  Well, the other day, I just happened to see that it actually said "$0.99 minimum payment due".  THANKFULLY, I saw this before it was due and paid it ASAP. But I have panic attacks thinking about what could have happened over a freaking dollar.  This is an AMEX Optima (re builder) card too so I know I have absolutely ZERO leeway.  

It seems like you could dispute all of this though, since you did pay the balance in full.  I would beg, steal, or borrow to keep late payments from reporting.  I wish you the best of luck in getting this resolved!!

[Friarchuck]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Yikes, OP. I'm sorry. I don't have any advice really but it is for reasons just like this that I obsessivelly check my accounts multiple times a week, just to be triple sure I have not missed anything. I am still re-builidng after tanking my credit in my 20's and can ill afford any kind of late payments reporting.

For example, I had a $0.99 balance on my AMEX that carried over. I checked the acct many times via my app and, since the font was so small and the numbers looked so similar, I thought it was saying I had a $0.00 mimimum payment due. Made sense to me, I didn't think there would be a mimimum payment on a $0.99 balance.  Well, the other day, I just happened to see that it actually said "$0.99 mimimum payment due".  THANKFULLY, I saw this before it was due and paid it ASAP. But I have panic attacks thinking about what could have happened over a freaking dollar.  This is an AMEX Optima (rebuilder) card too so I know I have absolutely ZERO leeway.  

It seems like you could dispute all of this though, since you did pay the balance in full.  I would beg, steal, or borrow to keep late payments from reporting.  I wish you the best of luck in getting this resolved!!

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Cam if this really was the other day, and that .99 balance has carried over from another statement (i.e. you paid all in full except for $.99), you might also be subjecting yourself to miniscule trailing interest.  Although usually your credit card agreement says "if you are charged interested it will be at least $XX" so that might determine the amount of interest they will charge.  If you keep making charges on the card after that you might be subjecting those charges to interest as well because usually when you pay the lender applies your payments to the lowest interest balance first, so that .99 won't be paid off until your entire other balance that you charged gets paid because it is subject to a higher amount of interest.  This might seem like overreacting but it sure would suck if you charged a few hundred and ended up getting hit with 10-15 bucks in interest because of a stupid $.99 balance.

[Anonymous]

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@Friarchuck wrote:

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Cam if this really was the other day, and that .99 balance has carried over from another statement (i.e. you paid all in full except for $.99), you might also be subjecting yourself to miniscule trailing interest.  Although usually your credit card agreement says "if you are charged interested it will be at least $XX" so that might determine the amount of interest they will charge.  If you keep making charges on the card after that you might be subjecting those charges to interest as well because usually when you pay the lender applies your payments to the lowest interest balance first, so that .99 won't be paid off until your entire other balance that you charged gets paid because it is subject to a higher amount of interest.  This might seem like overreacting but it sure would suck if you charged a few hundred and ended up getting hit with 10-15 bucks in interest because of a stupid $.99 balance.

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Thanks for the info!  It wasn't a balance that carried over exactly.  It was a stupid iTunes charge that posted the day ater the statement cut.  There is sometimes a delay from the time you buy something from iTunes to the time it actually posts. This is true on credit cards or when I pay directly from my checking acct.  Anyway, I just didn't realize it had not posted prior to my paying the balance in full the day before.  To be honest I was less worried about interest and more worried about what could have happened had I missed a mimimum payment, not ever realized it, and it reported to the CRA's.  Had I not been over-the-top in checking my accounts so often, I would not have seen it.  

[joltdude]

Id pay Macy's and close or SD the account.

Good luck if you get fraud on a Macy's card.... its all snailmail and forms... and its what caused an associate of mine to close his Macys charge...

Dealing with Macy's is like dealing with CC in the early 80s...

-J

[Anonymous]

Back when I very first got my Macy's card, i put about $300 on the card then paid it off as soon as I got the bill.  The following month, I got a bill $3. I called in and they gave me a "one time" waive of the $3 interest they charged me even though I had PIF.  From that moment on, I use my card in the store for the extra discount then PIF before I leave the register.  As far as I can tell, that's the only way to avoid their "fee"

i also used used to work at Macy's and we would have customers come in confused because they had an interest charge on their cards even though they had PIF.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi everyone,  I need help.  So I had a balance of $149.21 due 4/13 on my Macy's card.  I paid the balance in full on 4/1.  I can never pay online or view statment.  Their online does not work, always had to pay over the phone.  For this reason I paid it in full to avoid this issue and said I would never use the card again.  Well today I recieved a call from Macy's collection department saying I owe them $8.00 and my account was 90 days past due. I was like **bleep** I paid that in full?  Well I guess they charged me a $2.00 interest charge every month.  I just paid it and the supervisor that I complained to said there was nothing she can do and that the credit department could report my account past due on the credit reports.  Can someone give me advice on what to do?  This is completely like a scam and I am in the middle of building a new home.  Please help!

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Sadly anything you can try that might work isn't going to resolve the issue quickly.  I would keep calling and hopefully you get a more friendly CSR and they can see how unfair it is and will help remove the negative from your credit reports.  Keep calling and going up the chain of command and hopefully you'll find someone who will help just so you don't call them again =)

You can also try filing a complaint with BBB and CFPB (http://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/) if the above doesn't work.  It will take months either way as even if they agree to do a chance it could take months for the new data to be pushed to the credit bureaus.

Best of luck.