Why you need to watch for your bills

Ever joked with a cashier: “If it doesn't scan, it's free, right?” Well, no, it's not. Just like you still have to pay your bills, even if you don't receive them …

I sauntered over to the Money Stack Exchange site for the first time in a while, and found this question:

I signed up for a line of credit through a store, and ended up being approved. What I didn't know was there was a fee associated with opening up the card which was charged to the card.

After 3 months I had a change on my credit report citing a delinquent account. I called the creditor and told them they had not sent me any notification of owing money and that I took a huge hit on my credit. The creditor acknowledged they had been sending the bill to the wrong address but did not rescind the hit on my credit.

The person asking the question was looking to have the ding on his credit removed. (If it were me, I would, too.)

After tracking down an article by Liz Weston that discussed the recourse available (basically, looking to building up a case against the lender) and providing this, I addressed another aspect: how he might have caught the issue earlier, even though the problem was on their end.

(To be fair, it was unclear that he even knew that there was going to be a charge on the card. If that's the case, then I'm not sure I would have thought to check my balance or look for a bill.)

Watch for your bills! Your finances are your finances

But this is what I offered:

[…] if you knew that there was a charge for opening the account, then I'd have been looking for the bill to come within a couple of weeks. If it didn't, I'd get on the horn with them and find out why.

In fact, I recently made a charge to my oldest credit card (I think it's nearly 30 years old!) to keep it active. I hadn't received a bill in a few weeks, so I called up the number on the card to find out about it. It was a little contorted how I had to pay the bill, but I did.

Or another example: If I fail to get my water bill from the county, for whatever reason, it still needs to be paid on time. Whether the post office loses it, or whether they just decide they have it in for me and delete my bill, I still owe it.

I've been through enough disputes and the like to know that, even if the other guy screws up, it's still my responsibility to know what should be happening with my finances.

I mean, it sucks, but with all of the terms and conditions that we sign and probably never read, a lot of the fallout from these problems falls on us, even if it's the lender's issue or even some third party's issue.

Paying a credit card bill: An Adventure

I'll step through what I did when I made that charge on my old credit card:

1. I received a letter telling me that my card has been inactive for a long time, and would be canceled if I didn't make a charge by January 14th of this year.
2. I buy a pizza with the card December 24th to keep the card active.
3. The middle of January rolls around, and I still haven't received a bill for that charge.
4. I call the number on the card to check my balance. The system tells me I don't have anything due at this time, but my credit limit is down by the amount of the pizza.
5. On the same call, I talk to someone who is able to see the Domino's charge and tells me that the bill is due February 5th. She tells me to expect the bill by the end of that week, which is around January 21st. I get the payment address just to make sure I can mail a check if things don't arrive on time.
6. A few days later, I receive the bill, but it's due February 15th. I call back, and the person on the line doesn't even see the statement that was sent out. I re-verify the payment address.
7. I mail out the check the first week of February to that payment address.
8. I look at my checking account balance. Two days before the bill is due, the check still hasn't posted as being paid, so I call the number a third time to check the balance on the card. My credit limit is back up to the maximum.
9. The next day, I see that the check has posted to my account.
10. Whew, I think that's it!?

Most of the time, bills come like they should. But not always.

The point of all this is to watch for your bills because:

• Sometimes bills are slow coming. I could have received the bill with only a week before it was due. Or I might not have received the bill at all. That happens, too. But the bill is still due!
• Sometimes the lender's systems don't give consistent information. The person I talked to couldn't see my bill. Her due date and mine were different. (At least I had an actual bill with an actual due date that I could refer to in case there was an issue.)
• Sometimes payments take a while to post, and it's not always clear that they have. Eventually, everything seems to be consistent, but for a bit, it wasn't, and all of this was happening around when the bill was due, despite me giving a week and a half for the check to get over one state.

All of this was probably overkill, but … I'm the little guy. If something went wrong in all of this, and I ended up being late on the bill, it's my credit rating that suffers.

And, frankly, if that happened, what the heck was I doing waiting for it to fix itself?

On what planet would I consider it normal for a credit card bill to take three months to get to me? Not this one.

In the end, it's really up to me to keep track of when I should be paying my bills, even if I get no hints from the guys that are billing me.