Ally new interest charges?

[RedKhaos]

---

@pbtxlady wrote:

No, I didn't ever call them, so didn't ask for a refund. I let a statement cycle go by with no new charges, and my new statement shows a $0 balance, as it should. 

I re-read the terms on this card, and it states very clearly that there should be no interest charge if the balance is PIF by the payment date. There's some additional mumbo-jumbo about how they will reverse charges and re-enter them if they are pending when the statement cuts. I noticed that two small charges had shown up and then been reversed, and I wondered why. They've never done that before. But I was looking at the activity, not the statement, and it was not clear the charges weren't included in the balance. (1) It looks like they re-posted between payment due date and statement cut and got their fee that way. That's all I can think of. (2) And still don't know how they could do it for two months. 

---

(1) That's really strange. Did you pay by bill pay or some other manual method and was using the original/lesser balance amount then?

(2) If you were charged that small interest ($1.50) the first month, then you lost your grace period right then. But you can not regain it until a full cycle after. (Losing grace period means losing it for at least two consecutive months. This is industry standard) So even if you paid it in full immediately, you do not have grace period for your second month, which meant trailing interest ($1.50) got charged to your account.

[Pppoolboy]

Once you've lost your grace period on a card, it takes a couple of cycles to pay down to zero.

For example, you buy something on January 1, 2025 for $1000.

You pay $999 of that before the due date.

The next month you have $1 carrying over on your next statement.

You buy something else.  No grace period so it accrues interest from the day of purchase.

Your next statement shows a balance of $1 + interest + the second purchase.

You pay it off before the due date of the next statement.

Guess what, you now owe interest on the $1 and the next purchase even though you paid it all off on the second statement.

That interest shows up on your next statement.

That's three statements you owe money on, for those two purchases, since you didn't pay the first one completely off on the first statement.

[pbtxlady]

This is an old thread now, but if anyone is still wondering about this, I received this email today. It appears that the interest charges were erroneous. I had two credits. Since they were both larger than the original interest charges, it appears they also paid some small interest on the charges themselves. 

[Anonymous]

---

@pbtxlady wrote:

This is an old thread now, but if anyone is still wondering about this, I received this email today. It appears that the interest charges were erroneous. I had two credits. Since they were both larger than the original interest charges, it appears they also paid some small interest on the charges themselves. 

---

That's good!   Their mistake, leading you to do lots of research trying to find out what you might have done wrong...   So demand $200!