The trickery mainly involves people not paying attention. The due date is always stated on and coincides with arrival of the statement, yes? And I've rarely seen any pay-by-phone service that didn't involve a "convenience" surcharge.

Of course, one can easily "trick" the card bank back by not exceeding credit limits, always paying the balance in-full, on-time, and using a payment method that doesn't involve surcharges.

And I've rarely seen any pay-by-phone service that didn't involve a "convenience" surcharge.
The one and only card I have found that doesn't have any pay by phone fee, is Discover Card. As a result, that is the one I use about 99+% of the time.

Sue

Here is a link that might be useful: Finding the Best Credit Card Offer

The easiest way to avoid *all* of the problems that they generate ...

... cut 'em up!

o j

... cut 'em up!
YIKES!...Then I would have to actually go 'into' a gas station and stand in line behind folks buying Big Chugs, candy, chips, hot dogs, lottery tickets, and often gas.

It makes me nutso when the receipt does not print at the pump and I have to pull the keys, lock the vehicle and hope I did indeed pull the keys before locking it.

Sue

Well, Chase pulled the 'change the due date' thing on me too--they promoted that I could choose my due date (which I did) and I have it on auto pay from my checking account---but one month they moved up the date by 10 days without notice or explanation. Fortunately I am in the habit of checking everything on the bill so I caught it. No question in my mind that it was an attempt to generate fees. I have had this card for over 15 years, and always pay in full each month.

And, by the way, the bill did not arrive any earlier in the month to "coincide" with the earlier due date. I was left with just a few days to get the payment in and change my autopay date.

Sue: YIKES!...Then I would have to actually go 'into' a gas station and stand in line behind folks buying Big Chugs, candy, chips, hot dogs, lottery tickets, and often gas.

"It makes me nutso when the receipt does not print at the pump and I have to pull the keys, lock the vehicle and hope I did indeed pull the keys before locking it."

LOL! That's one of my pet peeves as well. I absolutely HATE when the receipt doesn't print out at the pump!

o.j.: The easiest way to avoid *all* of the problems that they generate ...
... cut 'em up!"

Paying cash for everything is one of the worst things people can do because - - at least in the U.S. - - you lose all of the legal protections you get by purchasing with a credit card. Especially in this economy with so many firms closing down and/or filing for bankruptcy. If you paid by credit card for a service or product that you didn't receive, you can get the charge reversed through AmEx, VISA or MC. If you paid by check or cash, then you become just another unsecured creditor and you're at the bottem of the totem pole if and when any remaining assets of the company are disbursed.

o.j.: The easiest way to avoid *all* of the problems that they generate ...
... cut 'em up!"

bethesdamadman-"Paying cash for everything is one of the worst things people can do because - - at least in the U.S. - - you lose all of the legal protections you get by purchasing with a credit card. If you paid by credit card for a service or product that you didn't receive, you can get the charge reversed through AmEx, VISA or MC."

Not necessarily. I have discovered that 'legal protections' don't always work in the customers favor.

I used my Chase credit card to pay for cellular service. At renewal time I renegotiated my contract for a much lower rate (1/2). The cell phone provider continued to overcharge me the old rate. They did this 4 months in a row.

Each time I called, they assured me it would be corrected the following month. It wasn't. The 4th time this happened I wanted to change my method of payment to cash and would go into their local store to do this.

I called the Chase to dispute the overcharge. They sided with the cell phone provider. They said because I was using autopay, they would not stop paying the cell phone provider until I gave Chase a confirmation no. from them. Only then would Chase stop paying the cell phone provider. No one at the cell phone co. (telephone or store) seemed to 'understand' what this 'confirmation no.' was about.

I finally called Chase back and told them to cancel my card/account. They said even if I cancelled my account with THEM, they would still continue to bill me for whatever the cell phone provider said I owed IN SPITE of the fact that I was already paying my cell phone bill with CASH (and had receipts to prove it).

I contacted a consumer reporter and she was able to resolve this for me. The cell phone provider credited my accounted, gave me money for the hassle, plus a new phone.

To this day I will never use autopay (or Chase bank) again.

A link that might be useful:

Terminating Automatic Bills. by The Dollar Stretcher by Gary Foreman.
retirementwithapurpose.com/finance/auto_bill.html

That's not a fault of the credit card per se ... but rather bad customer service on part of the cell company ... and an example of the hazards of using autopay. I pay all my bills online, but NONE of them are done automatically except my mortgage, and that is done as a recurring payment set up by me at my checking account bank, NOT triggered by autopay via the mortgage bank.

Bad service on BOTH Chase AND the cell phone providers part.

I just use my debit card to buy gas. I have one credit card left, Citibank and they recently doubled my interest rate and couldn't give me a good reason why. So, I got on-line and found a 0% card to transfer my balance to. When this one is paid off I'll never get another one.

kathsgrdn-"I just use my debit card to buy gas. "

You might want to be little extra watchful when using your card at the pump. Here is one reason why I pay with cash.

Happy Birthdayâ¦Iâve stolen $2500 from your account
October 27th, 2008
by John Carroll

Identity theft is a fast-growing problem, and Iâve taken it seriously for quite awhile. I pay to have people monitor my credit to ensure someone doesnât open accounts in my name, and I try to use temporary credit card numbers when I make online purchases. I shred personally identifiable information that I receive by mail, the better to deter âdumpster diversâ who might use it. Iâm also a stickler for using complex passwords on any site that provides access to financial information.

There are many, many ways, however, to have your identity stolen, and though from hindsight this should have seemed an obvious possibility, it wasnât something that I had taken sufficient care to avoid.

As the title of this post implies, someone managed to fraudulently withdraw $2500 from my bank account using an ATM card that was a clone of the one my wife and I have in our wallets (Iâm not sure whose card was the original source of the information). This was discovered the night before my birthday, and though I am sure to get all the money back (banks do insure for these kinds of things), it did mean that I spent all day Friday running around faxing, mailing, and filing police reports, which wasnât exactly the way I intended to spend the day.

According to a detective at the West Hollywood Sherrifâs department, a group of individuals had apparently installed a device inside a gas station pump in the area. This device had access to all information entered through the payment point. This includes full details of information stored on the magnetic strip on the back of cards (why, oh why, arenât smartcards as common here as they are in Europe), as well as anything entered via the keypad, such as a PIN number or a zip code. The device included a wireless transmitter that broadcast 300-400 feet, allowing someone seated in a car located nearby to capture all the information generated at the pump. At the end of a hard dayâs work, the thief would use this information to print the data onto card âblanks.â Given that my information was for an ATM card, they used it to visit bank machines far from my area of town."

A link that might be useful:

blogs.zdnet.com/carroll/?p=1887

For a long time I thought identify theft was mainly the problem of people who had tons of money and huge credit lines until Sears called me one day saying someone was attempting to get a credit card in my name. Boy was that a wake up call.