Circuit City Credit Card Late Fee Problem
 

I made a purchase at Circuit CIty using my credit card on 8/30. AT the time of my purchase, I updated my address at the store. The bank handling Circuit City's accounts (First National Bank of Georgia) sent the bill to my previous address. By the time it got to me, payment was over due. I checked my account online and found that they had added a whopping $28 late fee to my original purchase amount of $26.

I called their customer service, but the rep refused to take off the charge. I asked to speak to a supervisor, was told that there was "none available" but that my request would be put "in que" and that I would be contacted in 3-4 business days. That was on October 21 and I think you can guess the rest. No call. No service. No-soup-for-me.

I called CC's Cs number. They said that they can't do anything because the bank is a "seperate entity", but that a local store director might be able to help. Went to a store yesterday, and the manager agreed to make a call on my behalf, but I doubt that he will be able to do anything either.

What I especially about all of this is the arrogance of FNBoG. It's all right for them to do whatever they please and stall responding to my question (in hopes of accessing yet another "late fee" to my account perhaps?). As a customer, how am I supposed to know that updating my address at the store is not "sufficient".

If anyone has any creative ideas for addressing the problem, I'd love to hear them.

Not to sound rude to you, but should it not be YOUR responsibility to know when YOUR bills are due for payment? The bank sends you a statement, NOT a bill as your refer to it in your post! So, using your logic, if you had received no statement from the bank, would you have assumed that you were relieved of any responsibility to pay YOUR bills on time or to pay at all? Would you have just done NOTHING until you received what you term as a bill? I think not!
Just my take on this

Sounds like Onkyo works for a credit card company! Ha!

Onkyo, other than those people with direct-debit, there are very few people in the U.S. who make payments to their credit cards without first seeing a statement (either hard copy or online).

No one is going to add up their stack of receipts (if they kept them together) and attempt to calculate the minimum amount owed. They wait on the statement.

As a matter of fact, according to the law, you only have a certain amount of time to examine your statement to catch and report any fraudulent charges to you account. So, it's in your best interest to have the statement in your hands before making a payment to your account.

Now, on the other hand, I've never heard of a creditor who would not waive the late fee at least once. But... if you have a history of being late you might as well hang it up.

Onkyo, I accept MY responsiblity for paying MY bills and am not in the habit of paying bills late. The issue here (for me at least) is that the bank will not accept responsibility for delivering my statement (as you call it) to the right address in order for me to pay my bill in a timely manner, even though updatewith my correct information had been made to their system. Like rich-y I find it odd that they are not willing to waive a one-time error, particularly when they are complicit. If you are fine with a bank manipulating a situation so that they can charge exhorbitant fees on dubious practices, that's your affair.

And by the way, even though the bank has had my corrected information for over 60 days, they have yet to deliver a statement to me at my correct address. I found out about the late fee when I pro-actively looked up my account on-line. To insinuate, as you do, that I am trying to relieve my responsibility for paying the bill is worse than "rude" it's insulting, uncalled-for and just plain untrue.

Perhaps another suggestion would be to pay off your balance and close the account. When you call to close the account, followed by a letter, tell them why as you have stated above.

You could apply for a lower interest card and payoff the balance of the old card with the new card. With so many banks offering lower rates it just isnt worth the aggravation and stress if they wont work with you.

My two cents and good luck.

Re: Circuit City Credit Card Late Fee Problem
 

Credit cards are issued by banks, not by electronics stores. If you have a credit card, you should know this. Your card is not from Circuit City, it is from the bank. From what I see, you are 100% responsible for what happened, and my advice is to pay the fee and chalk it up to another life experience learned the hard way.


No, the update had not been made to their system - you updated your address at CIRCUIT CITY, not with the BANK. As the CSR told you, these are two very seperate entities.


"Over 60 days" puts it back at the time of your 8/30 purchase, when you changed your address at the store. This tells me that, apparently, you still haven't changed your address with the BANK ITSELF! You are dealing with First National Bank of Georgia for anything pertaining to this card, NOT Circuit City. Get in touch with FNBoG right away and make sure they have your current address on file, or this will continue.

sory to say but I agree with the others. You knew you made a purchase and had updated your address. So your expecting a bill. Then don't think anything of it when one doesn't appear.

Even with all that I would still side with execpt for the fact you checked your account online. This means you should have been able to see you had a balance and should of made some kind of contact earlier.

The best advice so far is pay off the account and close it. Anyone that charges a 100%+(thats going with the 28 late fee on top of the 26 original charge) interest is not someone you want to have a card with anyways.

BTW if you fight with them on this issue can end up being a mark on your credit report.

I did work for a credit card company for several years. It really changed my view about things. In the little booklet of small print which comes with your account, there is usually a sentence or two stating that the credit card is not responsible for mailing statements to you. They do it as a "courtesy." We trained associates to use these exact words with customers.

I keep a master sheet of all of my utilities and credit cards. I write the name of the company and the date the bill is due. Now that I can pay my bills online, I request to just receive an e-mail notification rather than a statement in the mail.

As the years go by, credit cards seem less likely to make adjustments. I worked in that industry for seven years. In the beginning, the customer was always right and the company was happy to make the adjustment. Things have changed to the exact opposite with most banks.

If you bitch loud enough and to the right people, they should take it off. My first rule of customer service is to ask for a manager first thing.

Wrote a check today paying off the balance and the late fee. Figured it was better just to get it done and move on.

Need to make a correction, though. The actual name of the bank is First North American National Bank (if there is a First National Bank of Georgia, I appologize). According to information I found on the web, FNANB is owned by Circuit City (so much for credit cards being issued by banks, not electronic stores-or should I have known this?). Apparently a lot of other people have had similar problems with them, as there are many negative evaluations posted about them on the web. In 1998 they lost a $12 million lawsuit filed by 43 states.

As soon as I know my payment has cleared, I'm cancelling my account. Of course, this may also lead to problems as they seem (by nature of other complaints) to have trouble cancelling accounts (they have a habit of saying the accounts are closed, but not closing them or of re-activitating them without telling the card holder).

If this is the type of company that you feel deserves your business, by all means be my guest. I will stick to those companies that do a better job of dealing honestly with their customers.

Didn't you have a forwarding address at the old address? Everytime I have had mail forwarded, I recieved it within a few days after it got to the old address.