Check Your Bills, WaMu Cardholders, Due Dates May Be Changed
If you're a former WaMu credit card customer and now with Chase, check your bill due dates. They may have changed, according to reports CreditMattersBlog is getting from its readers. Seems WaMu had a 25-day grace period, while Chase has one of "at least" 20.
Former Washington Mutual Cardholders Getting Snagged By Shifting Due Dates At Chase [Credit Matters Blog] (Photo: kilgore)
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Check your bills... doesn't seem to unreasonable. And, Chase has their butts covered by sending you a statement with the new due date.
*cheer for being responsible*
Mine got changed from a few days before the end of the month to the 15th. They told me when I activated my new Chase card. I don't care about the new due date. (Since I don't use it anyway)
It was the persistent upselling of Chase blah blah blah insurance and Chase blah blah blah protection that irked me.
Got me on it too, bastards. My own fault for not paying closer attention, but still....
Amex just did this to me. My bill was originally due on the 23rd of the month and now it's the 13th. Cheeky bastards.
That's Chase. I have a love/hate relationship with them. I love the Amazon card but hate the short time between the date the cycle ends and due date.
@ouphie: Amex did mine the other way. It was normally due around the 5th, and they pushed it out to around the 15th.
It is going to get worse as all credit card companies work as hard as possible to screw as many as possible as deeply as possible before the limited credit card controls take effect in 2010.
A month is a month is a month. How hard is it for banks to just compute interest based on the actual number of days in a month? I'm guessing that any computer system built in the last 60 years is up to the task.
I pay my credit cards via ING every Monday. So even if the due date changes the payment is always current. I don't even worry about it.
@PunditGuy: Imagine a computer having to do 5 million statements on the last day of the month.
It'd probably melt or crash. Not to mention having to stuff and send out all the statements and then on top of that having a couple hundred thousand people call a day or two later about their statements.
The pay cycles are staggered for a reason, yes, computing power is one of them. They don't have supercomputers to churn all these numbers out in one day.
WAMU changed our due dates it seemed every month. After putting up with it until I paid them off, I just closed the account. Best thing I ever did CC related.
Just checked, and mine has stayed almost exactly the same. Well, it may have gone up a day or two. But I check my online account pretty often, so I hope I'll be OK.
Check your APR too, my new Chase branded WAMU card went up to TWENTY FOUR percent. Yes it's paid off and cut up.
@idip: I don't think he's asking for every single bill to be due on the same day, but a 30 day month is not too much to ask...fine, make my bill due the 15th, but make it the 15th EVERY MONTH! Don't move it up by 5 days a month until I'm paying the bill twice in one month.
@junkmail: Yep, me too. My fault, I should have checked online (I do paperless billing, and have always payed the same day of each month).
Thanks, Chase, I appreciate the late fee. I didn't have any other use for that money anyway.
@legotech: Mine went up to 27%. I'm paying it off and getting rid of it. Unfortunately, they just made it a hell of a lot harder to pay off.
My WaMu (which started as Providian) card has had a payment date between the 10th and 13th of the month for years depending on weekends/holidays.
This month, they moved the due date to April 8th, and when I went to pay the bill on the 9th....whoops. $39, thank you very much.
So far, I've called once and been denied via secure message. I replied to the message with a request for a "courtesy adjustment"... so we'll see.
How appropriate for an article about WaMu due dates to be on the Consumerist today...
Today I went to the bank to pay my card and found out my due date had changed from what it said a few weeks ago... 4/18 to 4/16... I called in to complain, because I never recieved a statement to find out that by logging into the "new" online account access system, I was signed up for paperless billing.
Oh, and apparently they still cant do anything about chargeing me over limit fee despite being more than $50 under the limit back in fall of last year.
And apparently the people on the phone solve all this by shunting me over to Fraud to be placed on hold for an hour or two each time.
They seem to be doing well in convincing me not to ever be a customer of theirs again, despite not allowing me to pay off the card in peace.
I was recently snared in this little date trap myself. I ran a high balance because of being laid-off from work, I charged a few things I don't normally charge (eg groceries, gas, etc).
Well, the $39 late fee put me over my limit, so they slapped on another $39 over limit fee. Now, I was willing to pay the late fee for me not paying closer attention, but I did try to call and get the over limit fee removed. I told the CSR that $78 was a tad extreme for a late payment, but I got a canned corporate apology of "Sorry there is nothing we can.... yada yada yada".
I am paying down the card, I will close it, and I will be closing my checking account I have with Wamu/Chase. In my experience, customer service always tanks when two companies merge - especially for the "loosing" company.
It hit me.