Capital One what am I missing here? Credit card finance charge misrepresentation Charlotte North Carolina

nothing morre, nothing less. Why go througth this grief?? Cut them up, close the account to further charges while you get it paid off. then calculate themoney you spent "saving" it on the credit card, calculate the money you paid to the credicat card and the balance of the card. Then do the same with ALL your credit cards, to any car loans and outstanding debt that you might have. It is amaing really if you really figure out how much money you could have in COLD HARD CASH right in your hand!

This is not to sound condesending or anything, just a hepful way to show people that "CREDIT" card is not a helpful plastic little cute card. Sure y ou can have almost any picture of you or your pet put on it, but honestly when you play with SNAKES you play with FIRE! my husband and I figured it out, worked with the Dave Ramsey plan and got out of debt in no time. Once you make it your decision then you will feel the freedom to get you excited to get out of debt. Believe me, it can happen and then you will have money, not trying to "shop around" for the best deal to "borrow" the money. Your wont have to borrow, it will be in your bank!

Good luck, it can be done!

Cat

All credit card companies create a payment allocation method which is disclosed to you with the terms of your account and usually available at the website or you can talk to a rep about it.

When I was taking calls, most people knew before I even talked to them that by doing a balance transfer at a rate lower than their purchase rate, they'd be setting themselves up to basically stop using the card for purchases unless they really wanted to accumulate interest at the higher APR till the transfer was paid off.

I mean, it sucks if you don't know it or don't understand it, but it's not a scam. I mean, they have to make a determination of how to apply payments some way or the other, and there would probably be just as many people upset if they did it the opposite way (I can hear it now - "You people have been putting my payments toward my new purchases and now my 0% is expired and I'm going to be paying interest on that 10K!!!!".

I have heard that a Congressional committee is toying with the idea of a 50/50 split, half your payment going to higher, half to lower, but honestly, I don't see how that's much better, at least not for someone who usually pays off their new purchases (cos they still wouldn't be able to do so in that situation!).

In a situation you're describing, that you had a previous balance and wanted to use a check with 0% APR, you would want to pay the account to zero, wait for your statement to cycle again and THEN use the check to ensure that you won't pay interest, just the one-time transaction fee. That way, you also don't have to deal with average daily balance. Just because your account is at zero at some point in the cycle doesn't mean you're "starting over" when it comes to how finance charges are calculated.

In fact, to be on the super-safe side, if you previously carried a balance from one month to the next, you would want to get a payoff balance that would include estimated finance charges from the time your statement is printed to the time they receive your payment before you let the statement cycle then use the check.

It can get kind of confusing if you're not familiar with it, but your payment allocation method (the original subject!) is never a secret, and when dealing with large sums of money, it always behooves you to ask those sorts of questions.

Capital One is just another one of the scum bag credit card companies that creates crazy fine print to scam their customers. Working for them was a nightmare. They get away with charging you interest because they state that the lowest interest rate balance will be paid off first!

For example: You make $100 in purchases at 20%. You have a $50 cash advance at 0%. If you send a payment for $50, they put that payment towards your $50 cash advance. Therefore you never touch the balance with the higher interest rate! Believe me, they state this practice in the fine print on the back of the statement.
So bottom line, unless you have a very nice bank like USAA, do NOT take out a cash advance! Hope this helps.

I had the exact same problem (and same scenario - I always pay my balance in full and never before used a cash advance). Only after speaking to 2 reps and a supervisor did I realize how sneaky their system is and that I needed to point out that it was impossible to actually get the promised terms (a free cash advance) while continuing to use my account for purchases. At that point the supervisor agreed to refund my 3% fee if I paid the advance back in full, which I will do happily. Their reps acted like it was simply a matter of the technicality of how they apply payments to the lowest-interest balance (a technicality which is not on the back of the statement or their website, though I suppose they once sent it to me). But of course it's deliberate deception which deserves to be fought in court.

Read all of your account agreement documents and all disclosure. You cannot dictate how Capital One applies payment to the account. In your example, you write a check for $1500, then you charge a total of $1000. You get your statement for $2500, and make a payment of $1000.


Capital One does not take your payment and apply it only to your charges. Look at your Capital One statement on the left side toward the middle, there is a box that shows your finance charges, and breaks the finance charge down for purchases (charges) and cash. You will see here exactly how Capital One has calculated the finance charges. Make another post back here and let us know about this.

To wit: All of your payments are FIRST applied to any low-interest / interest-free balance transfers and interest-free or low-interest (promotional) cash advances.... and AFTER these are paid off, then your payment is applied to your purchases.

Remember the saying: "Nothing in life is free"?

This will be in your terms & conditions. I do not remember seeing this condition printed on the backside of those cash advance checks. I do not have a Cap-One card because of the complaints Cap-One accumulates here but I have gotten about 36 solicitations for their CC last year. My shredder has been a busy beaver.

Consumer Reports (Oct 2007) just published a review on CC banks, and credit unions were rated at the top. Cap-One (Crap-One?) came out very near the bottom, just above Providian and Direct Merchants.