Balance Transfer

[emferrari]

I did a balance transfer to a Discovery Card 2 years ago. I had an offer for 18 months 0% APR. I have adjusted the auto pay to make sure the payment would pay off the card in the 18 months and completely forgot about it. Time goes by and my balance didn't go down. I go check and for some reason I missed the deadline and now I have the accumulated interest on it. A similar situation happened to a PayPal Credit account I had and a Lowes account. (I am messy, sorry). I called Synchrony Financial and they did help me out on the Lowes card as just one month had passed by and they wanted the full amount paid within 5 days. I was able to do that and they removed the interest. PayPal didn't work with me, they were not willing to do anything about it. And I was just $15 short...

I am going to give Discovery a call and see if they can find out why it didn't pay it off based on the auto payment I set and see if they can work out a deal with me. Before I do that, has anyone had a similar experience with a positive outcome when calling the creditor?

[gdale6]

I have never heard of Discover backcharging interest all the way to the initial date of BT that is a scheme done by finance companies and as you have found out Comenity and Synch. Are you sure there is backcharging here?

[Shooting-For-800]

Bank cards are not the same as store cards.

You interest should only be on the balance at the end of the 0% period from that point on.

If you had 5,000 in 0% and paid 4,000 during the 18 months you will start to pay interest in month 19 on 1,000 not 5,000 and certainly not from the beginning.

You said 18 months then 2 years.  At most, you have 6 months worth of interest on the balance at the 18th month.

Maybe $100-200 in interest total?

[Anonymous]

Did you maybe miss a payment in autopay and that's why interest accrued (lost your promo rate)? Unfortunately, credit cards have to be babysat. If you set up an auto payment, at least at first check to make sure it went through. You can set a phone reminder to do so. And keep an eye on it regularly. 

You may need to aggressively pay it down due to the interest accruing now. You can call DISCOVER to see if anything can be done, but I suspect they would be willing to help you if this just happened. If it has been going on for 2 years, I doubt they will help you.

I would again suggest to pay this down ASAP, but don't fret over it. You'll need to babysit it every month and not rely on auto payments to do it for you. Also, if you get extra money here and there,  use it to pay down the balance. So more than one payment per month might be in order.