Sorry for the long post... I recently had an electronic check bounce when I made a payment for Citi CC. Now the APR is 29.9%!!! I'd like to hear some advice on how to get this lowered.
So I made an online payment to Citi with Bank account #1. The next day, I made an online payment to AmEx thinking it was using Bank account #2. Instead, I mistakenly clicked on Bank Account #1. There's not enough money to cover both payments (pretty sizeable ones, as I'm trying to cut down CC debt).
Oops.
I immediately call Amex to explain the situation and see if I can cancel. Since it's electronic, there's nothing they can do other than place a notation in my file that I called them, it was an honest mistake, and that they wouldn't charge me a returned fee. Fair enough. If my bank charges me an insufficient funds fee, I'll accept that as punishment for not paying close enough attention. I can swallow that.
Sure enough, my bank charges me a whopping $39. What AmEx fails tell me is that if the first payment fails, then the system will try again 2 more times! The 3rd time (ie penalty) drops me below the threshold to meet my payment for Citi.
You guessed it! Another insufficient funds fee!
Boy was I mad. After getting the runaround from my bank ("It's not our fault) and Amex ("you should talk to your bank" ). I let a AmEx CSR have it, which got things rolling. After explaining that I would've happily wired money to my account if I'd only known they were going to ping my account 3 times (which doesn't make any sense), they put a credit on my Amex to account for all the insufficient funds fees. OK, I'm feeling better. Meanwhile, I rush to get a payment through snailmail to Citi (since bouncing the electronic payments cuts you off from making more electronic payments). I make the payment in time (whew!) but now my interest rate is astronomical.
This really stinks, since I consolidated all my CC debt to Citi since it was previously the lowest APR card I had. Now it's the highest! So short story, long: How do I get them to lower the APR? Thanks for listening!
Message Edited by xanthines on 04-01-2008 09:30 AM