Credit Cards - Intrest, Fees, and Bullshit

[ViPER1313]

$40 is plenty bad enough for 1 day late. They can go fuck themselves. $10...sure...but $40 fucking dollars? I told them in my communications that I was not desputing the interest charged (like $4). I think its the amount of the fee that is abusive. The reason I ask how much other places charge is to comare how much a rape job their fee is. I figure some of you guys know what the fee is even if you have never paid it. Frankly I use credit cards for convienence and security. I NEVER carry a balance. Never. So they really don't make any money off of me any other way. I was actually rather surprised they gave me the first one back for that very reason. I use it like my AMEX, and I would only have AMEX if it was taken everywhere. Everyone screws up every once and awhile and pays late. It happens. That's life. But I think its damn shitty to charge me out the ass for being a day past.

Credit card terms are set up to reward people who pay on time and penalize people who don't - $40 for a stupid mistake sucks, but like RJ said all you can really do is suck it up and learn from it or make the choice to not use the card. Lots of the time it's WAY worse. At one point, my friend couldn't make the payment on a card with a $1000 balance until 2 weeks after it was due. The card company charged him some sort of late fee and jacked the interest rate from 14% up to over 30 percent. His monthly payment was $300 something minimum, and almost none of it went to the principal.

Also, card companies still make money off of you even if you never pay them interest or account/late fees - they make a small percentage of every transaction you make with the card.