Citi Cards - Thank You!

photo credit: shawn.l Most people view credit card companies as evil and greedy organizations that take advantage of hard working and decent Americans. The majority of the time, I would agree with this view. However, I would also say that even though credit card companies prey on the innocent and take advantage of people at every chance they can, there can be a bright side.

Call it being tired or too stressed about the financial markets, but I forgot to pay my last month’s credit card bill! I have been a Citi Rewards member since 2004. During that time I have never been late on a monthly payment and have always paid the balance off each month. My family uses the card so that we can earn rewards points through the ThankYou Network. We have averaged around ~$300 per year in passive income, just by charging a lot of our expenses to our card. In fact, any payment on a bill that I can make that accepts credit goes onto our Citi card or our new Discover Open Road card. The only time I wouldn’t use one of the cards is if there is any additional fee charged from using credit.

As I mentioned above, I was late for the very first time on last month’s Citi credit card payment. I completely forgot about the payment actually. I have all of our bills setup on auto-pay through either our credit cards or through our checking account. The three exceptions to this are the two credit cards and our monthly water bill (our municipality charges an extra fee to use any type of auto-pay). In an attempt to be somewhat green, I have also elected most of our billing statements to come via email instead of in the mail. So I typically rely on receiving an email to pay off these three manual payments. Unfortunately, I received the monthly billing notice email from Citi, but took no action on it.

Last Sunday as we were out finishing up our weekend errands, my wife got a call on her cell phone from Citi. It was a customer service representative asking if everything was ok with us financially? The rep was calling because we were six days late on our payment and they wanted to make sure nothing was wrong. Of course my wife (who handles none of our finances) immediately panicked thinking someone stole our money or identity. The lady on the phone asked us to check our records when we got home to verify if we made our payment or not. Of course, I thought about it for a minute and then realized that I didn’t make the payment! My heart sunk and I immediately felt shame as I pride myself for on time payments and sound personal money management. The rep informed us once we verify the payment status that if we called back within the next day, they would wave all late fees ($39.95) and finance charges as we have been great customers with excellent credit.

Of course we verified that the payment was not made and I called them back and took care of the situation. On a side note, the lady told me that they would also wave some fee called the one time check payment fee, or something like that. So in the end we paid off our balance without any extra charges. After it was all over, I sat down in amazement wondering why a credit card company would go out of their way to initiate a call with us on a payment that was six days late and offer to wave any extra fees if we took immediate action. I didn’t think credit card companies worked like this. I always figured that they disliked customers like us who always paid their balance off each month while earning rewards points and profiting from them. Maybe it is a trickle down effect from the financial meltdown? Maybe these companies actually value customers with good credit who pay their bills. I don’t know but I wanted to say - ThankYou Citi!

Avoid late fees through auto-pay - I didn’t realize it, but I asked the Citi representative why they didn’t have auto-pay and she said they actually do. They are sending me the packet to fill out so I can mail it back to them. This should help prevent any future late fees!

For those of you who read my blog regularly, you know that I view credit cards as an opportunity to make money from these companies instead of losing my hard earned income from them. Credit cards can be used to earn points and rewards on purchases made as a form of passive income. In addition, you can sometimes find promotional 0% cards that can allow you to put your money to work for you somewhere else.

Tagged as: Credit Cards