Macy's still charged interest!!

[armymom]

Last month I received a balance transfer check offer for 0% interest until Sept '11 from my Citi MC so I decided to take advantage of it and pay off my Macy's.  I get my bill from Macy's today and I'm being charged interest when it was paid in full!!    I called cs and was told it was the interest from the statement date to the date it was paid off.  I asked why the interest, I paid it in full.  She said because I was a payment customer, not a PIF, I was being charged the last months interest.  She also stated this went into effect last month and Macy's was trying to get customers to PIF to avoid being charged the last months interest.  I am furious!  I'll never pay another penny in interest to Macy's again!

[Anonymous]

This doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me.

If you had paid the prior month balance in-full, then made new charges and paid current month in full there would be no interest.  But if you did NOT pay the prior month in-full, and paid in-full current month, you still owe interest on the prior month balance. 

Seems right to me. Guys, correct me if I'm wrong.

[armymom]

I paid previous balance and all charges for the month on 11/02.  And I made no charges until after my next billing date  on 11/08.  I also did a BT on my Orchard to Citi and was not charged any interest. 

[Anonymous]

Well, you owe interest from the day when the prior statement cut to the day when you paid the balance off. There is nothing unusual about that.

[Wolf3]

It usually takes 2 months of PIF to get past the interest.   The earlier you pay after the statement closes, the less interest you owe on the following statement.

[chasmith]

A couple of things to consider:

First, many, but not all, cards offer a "grace period", if your balance on your last staement was zero and you PIF before the end of the grace period no interest is owed.  But if you owed a balance on the previous statement, you owe at least the interest on the prior month's balance.

There was also something called something like average balance or something like that, that allowed them to charge effectively an extra month's interest.  That was outlawed by the Dodd-Franks act I believe.

[armymom]

I understand what you all are saying.  Where I'm still a little unclear is why Macy's is charging me one last months interest and Orchard didn't.  And the Macy's cs rep stated this was something that went into efffect last month.

[llecs]

If you look in the CC agreement and often on your statement, you'll see that they can charge interest using a couple of different methods (e.g. avg. daily balance) and I believe they get to choose. Some of my CCs will remain at $0 after PIF when I had carried a balance and others will charge interest.

[armymom]

I got out my statement and read the very fine print on the back.  And it's all clear to me now.  I was under the impression I still had a grace period if the balance was PIF.

[haulingthescoreup]

At least you've gotten your balance away from them and their crazy rates!