I'm not a big diary writer, but I've been on here awhile now and I've seen some diaries related to this. I think I just got screwed by Capital One and need to call them and am looking for some advice.....
I'll admit my faults right away - I should have checked my statement a couple of months ago and I spaced on it. My bad. Now for the story: I have a Capital One credit card (as my diary title suggests) and it has a $500 limit. I've been rebuilding my credit for a few years now after completely ruining it in college. My balance as of last fall was around $400 and I was paying them each month - usually a little over the minimum. My husband suggested that we add them as a payee on our online banking and we set that up last fall at some point. I realized after a month or so that they were getting our payment one day after the due date and I incurred a couple of late fees. No problem - our fault. I paid the late fees and in addition, made an extra payment in January, thinking that we would be back on track with payments.
Here's where I messed up. I forgot to check my statements - totally slipped my mind. I just assumed that everything was back on track. We have a baby in the house and I must have new mommy brain worse than I thought - also my busy season at work is nov-april, so I've been pretty flat out. Our mortgage, electric, cable bills, etc only require cursory checks each month, but in general we're always on track bill-wise.
I checked today and my balance with them is $800+. All our payments have posted, including my extra one in January, but they are still considering my payments 1 day late instead of 29 days early. First they assessed $39 dollar late fees for each month, then they started assessing $39 over limit fees on top of those.
I'm dreading calling them, but I know I have to. I had an issue with them a couple of years ago, when I had made an online payment the morning my bill was due. The money left my checking account immediately and according to my Capital One statement, it had processed that day as well, but they charged me a late fee anyway. I called them to dispute it and they told me that even though they received their money on the due date, it was still considered late. Then the customer service rep laughed at me when I started getting a little angry. Then he suddenly had language comprehension issues when I asked for his manager. He didn't understand me he said - and wouldn't switch me over. I got frustrated and hung up and paid the damn late fee, which was, of course, exactly what they planned on happening.
Any tips from people in the know about these things? Should I even bother trying to get the fees reversed? Or am I in the wrong here? New plan is to pay off this card before anything else gets paid off. We'd been trying to get the hospital bills from when our son was born paid off first, but now this one will be taking precedence. Help??