Whiny

[valis2]

I'm back, and I'm waaay angry.

I have six credit cards, each with their own balance, from when I started the business. I've been working on them slowly for years. Well, last month I decided I would do a balance transfer to consolidate two of them together for a better interest rate. Card #1 has a 29.99% interest rate. Card #2 has a 13.99% interest rate, and balance transfer checks for a 5.99% rate. So I've been waiting for #2 to send me the monthly bill so I could pay it off. (I'm never late on my payments (maybe once in the last five years), and generally keep them all in the same place so I can pay them as they come in.)

I come home today, completely strung out from the road (yes, you're right about that, Bob Seger), totally worn out after 28 hours of driving, and with an appointment early tomorrow morning, and then four days of day job. I find the monthly bill for card #1. Yay! I shall transfer your balance, and never shall you bother my mailbox again! But wait...what's this? "Turned over to collection agency"? WHY?!!

Sure enough, I look through last month's checks, and realize that I never received a bill. (Yes, I do understand that it is my fault, it's their courtesy to provide a bill.) BUT WHO TURNS IT OVER TO A COLLECTION AGENCY FOR ONE MISSED FUCKING PAYMENT?!!!!!

So I find the balance transfer checks. They've expired YESTERDAY. I decide to do an electronic transfer over the phone. I call, and end up speaking to a service rep who is very difficult to hear and understand. I have some hearing damage, and I'm trying desperately to understand her, and I keep asking her to repeat herself, but it's no use. I can only make out every third word, and she's saying that an electronic transfer will take 7-10 days, and some other stuff that I just can't make out about lower interests and higher interests.

WTF?! When I send a check, it takes 3 days to get there and be cashed. It's going to take TEN days electronically?! I start to get very stressed out, and finally tell her to mail me some new balance transfer checks. She says something about connecting me and then HANGS UP ON ME.

@#$:OIU*(P%O:ITYPIOERHG:KLWRTHPO@#UI%Y!@OY$@@!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have to go to bed NOW before I smash something. Seriously. I'm sleep-deprived, stressed, and completely going crazy that my credit is going to be affected by this jackass company.

Comments

[athenakt.livejournal.com]

Ugh. *snugs like crazy* - Paperwork and financial bureaucracy can be maddening (see my past post mentioning Polaroid. Don't buy from them if you want customer service).

The best thing you can do is to slowly work this out, then start plugging away at the payments. I took my credit from Fair to Excellent over a number of years simply by not missing a payment and paying over the minimum, even if it's only by $5- more is better of course. Finally I dropped a chunk of my savings to pay off a chunk of the balances. They've gone back up since then of course, but so has my credit. :)

It's good for your credit to have a card for a long period of time as opposed to having a couple of new ones. It's not good to have too many cards and/or to have the cards over 30-50% used. Try to find a good combination that helps you financially, and read those Balance Transfer terms carefully.

Also, I never depend on the snail mail bills; as you can see they can be missed. I do everything online now, even making my payments that way. I bet the CC company will say something about their disclaimers that will make them not responsible. Knocking you for one missed payment however? That's a bit much.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I've had these cards for ten years now (or more, actually). What happened is that I went a little haywire starting my business, and spent a lot more than I should have. I really didn't know what would make good products, and I bought a lot of cheap components that I ended up giving away (this was long before I knew about eBay).

Since that time, I have not charged a single item. However, all of the cards were charged nearly to their limits, so it severely limited me. (I have, as of recently, charged a few things, for Lumos, and nearly paid the new charges off already.)

Anyway, several years ago I ended up getting fired from my teeny little independent bookstore job, and I decided to try to make a go of it on my own for a couple years. That was disastrous. It was okay during April-December, when money was coming in, but during January-March I would nearly lose it. For three years in a row I ended up missing payments and incurring late fees. This made the interest rates skyrocket, not to mention all of the late fees and other nonsense that was piled on.

In desperation, I tried to open new accounts. However, they will not let you if you have too much debt already. And, because three of the accounts are closed, and the other three were far too close to their limits, I couldn't transfer any balances at all. I was stuck with 30% interest rates for two of the cards. The rest aren't much better.

Since that time, however, I have missed perhaps one or two payments at the very most for all six cards in total. (One was dropped between the seats of a friend's car. The other was one I forgot about.) My credit score has slowly risen until it's within an acceptable amount again. I've paid a little extra on many of the cards just to try to chip at a little of it. I've managed to make great headway with one of the closed cards (the one with the highest balance and highest interest rate).

Recently (within this year) the credit card companies have finally been raising my limits. I was ecstatic. I immediately used the new credit to finance my trip across the States, and I paid it all off before I was charged a penny of interest.

Then I decided that I would transfer one balance entirely, so I could get down to five cards. I receive at least three sets of balance transfer checks per month, so I didn't think there'd be any problem, until this fiasco.

As far as snail mail goes, I really can't change over to the electronic payments as of yet, because I'm gone so much. Someone checks my mail, you see, and pays the bills when I'm gone, and I'd rather not have them involved with my online finances. Not that I don't trust them, but that would be just too much to ask.

I still can't believe the collections insanity.

Oh, and they've already cashed the check I sent. I can't wait to send them a big fat transfer check. I almost want to write something nasty on the memo line, but that would be so silly.

[athenakt.livejournal.com]

Ow. Owwie.

Getting one card cleared is good (DON'T cancel it). The raised limits- great news! While I understand you're transferring to lower interest cards, it's not necessarily the best thing to do; when cards are at or near max it's bad for the credit rating.

What you might want to do is go to a non-profit credit agency for help in lowering your interest rates. Florida has Consolidated Credit which I'd considered trying before I got a raise and a better handle on my bills. ;) Do a bit of investigation into these organizations, even if you do the balance transfers.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Getting one card cleared is good (DON'T cancel it).

Er...it's already been canceled, ages ago. Only three of the six cards are active.

The problem with debt consolidation companies is that it actually looks worse on your financial record to have debt consolidation than to have bankruptcy. Seriously. I would only consider it as a drastic, drastic resort. I'd be more inclined to speak with my credit union and see if they can offer a consolidation loan for a card, or perhaps their own credit card...maybe because I'm already their customer, they won't decline me.

I have friends who have gone through debt consolidation, and it was a really scary, nightmarish thing, and it's not in line with my long-term plans at all. :(

Thank you so much for the advice! *hugs*