What if you had forgotten, or the payment had gotten lost in the mail, and they had not informed you but dinged your credit rating instead. Would you now be saying that you don't understand why they hadn't notified you earlier? Or would it have been OK with you that they waited?

"And our credit ratings are 780 so it's not like we don't pay our bills on time. "

ummm... you did not pay THIS bill on time!
Putting something in the mail on the dues date is NOT paying your bills on time.
A DUE date is when they expect payment to be processed by.
Not when it is mailed by you.

Be happy they called and are giving you a grace period...

And quit blaming the post office. You put the payment in the mail the day it was due. If you've been on the planet long enough to own a car, you know darn well that when you do that, the payment will be late.

You paid the bill late. It is your fault. Quit blaming other people.

The DUE date is the 4th, so put it in the mail 7 days prior.

That way the payment has sufficient time to get there via mail and to be processed before it is DUE.

Getting back to the OT,i think it is great they called you.In case you had forgotten,you'd have still had plenty of time to get them the $$$ without penalty..

One of the nuances to auto lending is that some consumers finance the vehicle, make one or two payments and then they and the car "disappear". It's referred to as a skip and run.

Auto finance companies experience a lot of losses, even when clients have prime FICO scores. This is because, unlike a house, the collateral has wheels :).

Another piece of advice is that one late fee will pretty much wipe out any benefit of "float" by mailing your payment so close to the due date, especially in this interest rate environment. The float value of $600 is probably around 2 cents per day, assuming your deposit is earning 1.50%. So, I agree with the poster who suggested getting the check in the mail 7 days before it is due.

If the name Citizen's Auto Finance is the real name of the company you are probably doing business with a buy here, pay here company. They make their money from doing repo's from people that just don't make the payment on time. Do not be surprised if the payment does not make it within the float time that the car has been removed from your parking space the last day of the time period. The grace period for them ends at 12:01 am of the last day.

Never got a phone call.
Jane

Huh? If it is a fixed car payment, a cable bill/phone bill/credit card bill,et al, that is not true if paid in full,no additional interest is accrued...

And by default, you did choose Citizen's Auto Finance when you accepted that offer from Ford. Ford makes money on that arrangement, so they are not inclined to point out that you can shop around.

It is always important to remember that a car dealership, or anyone else offering financing, is more interested in what they earn on the deal than in looking out for you.

My guess is that CAF offered a better rate because they are interested in improving the mix of prime/subprime paper on their balance sheet. But that is not to say that some other company might not have been offering a better rate for the customer. I suspect FMC is just not offering great rates right now because they don't want to grow their loan portfolio.