Penalised for paying early!

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gabriel

Facilitator
Jun 21, 2008
26
2
0
Was well miffed at this. I'd managed to miss a couple of payments on my Mastercard by my own carelessness, so decided to set up a standing order to pay £5 a month just in case it happened again.

It worked fine for a while, then next thing I know, I get hit with a missed payment charge and my card is frozen... Turns out my standing order went through one day early, so this particular £5 was credited to the previous month's balance rather than the current one. Result: a 'missed payment'. I've complained but so far the response has been less than satisfactory.
 
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GlasgowGirl

Facilitator
Jul 22, 2008
287
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If the standing order went through a day early, surely that is your bank's fault, and they should pay the charge? Credit card companies can be ludicrously inflexible about this sort of thing, but I find that if you make enough of a nuisance of yourself, these sorts of charges do eventually get refunded.
 
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Paul Carcone

Facilitator
Jun 22, 2008
141
7
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South Coast
www.carconeconsulting.com
The trouble here is that your credit rating will be affected...particularly as you have done this before. It is going to look like you have troube re-paying debt and you may struggle in the future.

As such, it would be very much worth obtaining a copy of your credit report from Experian and Equifax and going through the procedures explained within about how to have this administrative error removed, or at least flagged, on your account.
 
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gabriel

Facilitator
Jun 21, 2008
26
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Good point, Paul, and interestingly, I registered with Experian a couple of days ago to explore that exact avenue! I also recently received a letter by mail from my card co saying they were currently investigating my complaint. So maybe something is happening somewhere down the line after all.

Thanks for the tip, though.
 
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GlasgowGirl

Facilitator
Jul 22, 2008
287
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0
On the subject of Experian...I registered with them a while back and took advantage of their offer to access my credit report online with a free trial period. I cancelled before the end of the trial period, but they still charged me the £40 odd for online access to my report. It took several phone calls to get a refund. I also noticed that they were strangely reticent about advertising the statutory right to a hard copy of your credit report for £2.
 
Tony

Tony

What Consumer Founder
Apr 7, 2008
18,307
3
38
Bolton
I saw this the other day in the Metro - Experian Credit Expert, check credit rating, credit reports & file alerts - with Experian CreditExpert

If you go for this make sure you cancel before the 30 days is up, otherwise you will be paying a monthly subscription.

GG is right though you can get your report for £2, but they will only provide it by post. It took me 10 minutes to find this link:

http://experian.metafaq.com/templates/experian/main/answerPage?_mftvst:answerRef=$http://api.transversal.com/mfapi/objectref/EntryStore/Entry/http://www.metafaq.com/mfapi/Metafaq/Clients/experian/Modules/Downloads:137685:4&_mftvst:moduleID=$Downloads&_mftvst:topicID=$&id=VEGAI4NU72RTI9NJDEK9M8NUJQ

If you want it online you need to pay £3.50, this is a bit cheeky if you ask me.

Equifax is another credit report provider - http://www.equifax.co.uk/Products/credit/credit-report.html - can't find the £2 option here either

Tony
 
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gabriel

Facilitator
Jun 21, 2008
26
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That's a bit worrying, GG. I won't be at all pleased if I have that kind of hassle. Not sure if things have changed but Experian now seem to be offering an online report for £5.

Have received the pin number by post and registered online and was surprised to see that no credit card missed payments have been found. Very strange as my credit card co implied that these were automatically entered. I am, however, still waiting to hear the outcome of their enquiry into my complaint.

Tony - unfortunately that first link didn't work for me.
 
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Paul Carcone

Facilitator
Jun 22, 2008
141
7
0
South Coast
www.carconeconsulting.com
Gabriel,

The credit scores only get updated once a month...so it can take anything up to 8 weeks for any missed payments to register.

Of course, this is the frustrating aspect of getting repairs to your score to register as the amendments can also take up to a month to take effect...and this is pretty useless when you are applying for a loan/other type of credit.

I believe that you can post comments next to any delinquent entries to explain what has happened. It might be worth checking to se if this service still exists.
 
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gabriel

Facilitator
Jun 21, 2008
26
2
0
My credit check didn't show anything untoward, which was a relief. I've now cancelled my trial with Experian but will be watching out to see if they try to take payment as they did for GG.

Postscript to the credit card story: I got a refund! I put in a complaint by email a couple of months ago, saying I wasn't happy and the next thing I knew they had begun a formal investigation into the situation. Their regs must stipulate that they need to follow up every complaint. Anyway, pleased to say they recredited the £12 late payment charge. No interest, mind... wonder if I should complain about that...
 
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scotchlass

Facilitator
Sep 5, 2008
111
2
0
Thanks for the tip, I have just had my logging on details through the post from Credit Expert- I must remember to cancel it, or it will just add to my missed payment history!!!
 
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jennyhicks

New Member
Oct 10, 2008
11
0
0
You can not win with credit cards. I had the same thing happen to me and now it seems I am getting penlised for paying it off fully each month.
 
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