One of the things I inherited from my father is fiscal responsibility. I
pride myself, just as he did, on paying my bills on time and not going
into debt unless it is absolutely necessary. The biggest debt I ever
accrued in my life was for college tuition and it was paid off promptly.
Back in 7th grade, we were taught how to balance a checking account and
the lessons have stuck with me. Every time either I or my wife uses our
ATM cards, we put the charge slip into a little basket on my desk and
when I get a chance I enter a batch of them into MS Money. And when I
get my Chase banking statement each month, I reconcile the Chase
transactions against what I entered in MS Money in the same way that I
learned in the 7th grade.
I also use Chase Online to pay my bills. Since more and more credit
cards impose stiff penalties if you are even a day late, I make sure to
check the time it takes for a payment to register. Some accounts take a
day or two, but most are flagged as “same day”. So when I last paid my
Chase Visa bill on September 2nd, the same day it was due, I assumed
that there would not be a penalty.
So given my anal retentiveness around these questions and my hatred for
banking institutions, you can imagine my consternation when I discovered
that I incurred a $29 late fee. I called Chase and discovered that
according to their records, my payment was received on September 3rd,
not the 2nd. After insisting emphatically that their records were wrong,
I finally discovered how I was snookered into a late charge following
the logic of Kafka novel.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/09/26/chase-manhattan-late-fee/
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