Thread: Bill Collectors (rant warning)

lol, take a look at your bill. i'm almost certain that it contains the total amount that you owe the date the bill was generated.
notice on that bill that your payment has already been accounted for.
for the exact same reason while your $75 payment is equivalent to 5 minimum payments, it doesn't count as if you have already made those future payments and absolve you from paying the next five bills, right?
it's very simple and straightforward - every time you get a bill you either have to pay it, or if you think it's erroneous you have to contact the billing entity and clarify it.

as another example credit card companies have a few days between a payment due date and when the next bill is generated. any payment made within these few days is past due for the previous bill and doesn't count towards the next either, so it just reduces the total amount of debt but doesn't affect any penalties for not paying on time.

and yes you should wait until the due date on your bills and only pay the minimum payments on any interest free loans, otherwise you're throwing away money. if you want simplicity not getting into loans when you don't have to is the way to go

I just checked my bill. Indeed you are correct it shows my $75 payment, so I should have looked more carefully.

However it does NOT list the amount due to pay off within 6 months. A home loan and car loan list an equal payment every month over a set "term" to pay off the balance. This bill lists a "minimum due", and paying the minimum would pay off the bill in 4 years rather than 6 months.

As I said earlier in this thread, I made a mistake and didn't read the bill as carefully as i should have. I only verified that I made my payment before the due date, and that my payment was more than the minimum amount. It never occurred to me to check the statement date and be sure my payment was made after that date. I saw that the bill had a minimum of $15 and due on May 28th.

You mention credit cards having a short amount of time between statements. I'm aware of this, but recall, this was my FIRST statement on this account so I wasn't aware of the billing cycle when I made my first payment. Just out of curiosity, I checked my home mortgage statement, and there is no 'dead period' like that. The statement date is the 2nd of the month, and the due date is always the 1st of the month.

Yep, I should have read more finely into the fine print on the loan contract, I get that. I thought it was a 6 month interest free loan, when in reality it is a credit card with a 6 month promotional period. I was expecting home/car loan type statements. Now I know differently, and I know to watch out for this in the future.

Originally Posted by gugi

lol, take a look at your bill. i'm almost certain that it contains the total amount that you owe the date the bill was generated.
notice on that bill that your payment has already been accounted for.
for the exact same reason while your $75 payment is equivalent to 5 minimum payments, it doesn't count as if you have already made those future payments and absolve you from paying the next five bills, right?
it's very simple and straightforward - every time you get a bill you either have to pay it, or if you think it's erroneous you have to contact the billing entity and clarify it.

as another example credit card companies have a few days between a payment due date and when the next bill is generated. any payment made within these few days is past due for the previous bill and doesn't count towards the next either, so it just reduces the total amount of debt but doesn't affect any penalties for not paying on time.

and yes you should wait until the due date on your bills and only pay the minimum payments on any interest free loans, otherwise you're throwing away money. if you want simplicity not getting into loans when you don't have to is the way to go