On 4/25/2014 8:09 PM, nestork wrote:
....

I just got my April VISA bill in the mail today. They included $3.54 in
interest charges because they said I didn't pay my March VISA bill on
time. The "payment due date" on that March VISA bill was April 7th, and
I paid that bill at my local financial institution on April 3rd.

It turns out that the Royal Bank considers the phrase "payment due date"
to mean the date they have to recieve your payment by, ...

Needless to say, nowhere on my VISA bill do they clarify what is meant
by "payment due date", and so I presumed it meant the day I had to pay
by.

Maybe not on the the bill, but you can be quite sure it's in the terms
and conditions you signed on applying for and accepting the card.

But, the kicker is that if you pay two days late, you don't get charged
interest on the outstanding balance for two days, you get charged
interest at 19.99% for 23 days. That's because the Royal Bank allows a
3 week grace period after they send out the bills for you to pay by.

That's also in the terms and conditions...

....

I complained about this to someone at the Royal Bank today. I told them
that if they don't clarify what they mean by "payment due date", ...

They do; it's in the contract that you signed if you had only read it in
full.

It's only $3.54, but it's the principle here. If you say "payment due
date", that normally means the date a person has to pay their bill by.
If it takes additional time for the payment to make it's way to it's
destination, that's something the recipient should take into account
when setting their payment due date.

They've already done that; that's how they got the date they did as
explained in the T&C on the contract.

That said, I have on the rare occasion when there was a delay not of my
fault had success w/ American Express in getting the charge rescinded.

The way to ensure the payment is there on time when getting close to the
due date is to use the card's 800 number and pay by transfer directly
instead of thru the institution so you don't have the delay for them to
process. VISA or AmEx or whoever will have their system set up to
initiate the electronic transfer at the time of the call, not when
somebody at the bank gets around to entering it.

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