Surprises in the Mail.

My American Express bill somehow went AWOL this month. I use AMEX a lot, I have been a customer for decades and I always pay my bill on time. Always. But I don't have my billing cycle memorized and can't tell you exactly when the bill arrives in the mail, so while I idly thought early this week that I hadn't seen it yet no alarm bells went off in my head.

I tried to use it online the day before yesterday, which is, apparently, ONE DAY past the day the bill was due, and found my account was frozen. Ruh-roh. So I went to the website, saw the bill was late (by a day) and made an online payment on the spot. A BIG online payment. (Obviously, this is a card on which you can carry a balance, and I put my move, among other things, on it last month, so it's quite a balance right now and I'm paying it off in big chunks.) Whew! Glad I caught that quickly! Problem solved, right?

Today's mail contained a communication from AMEX - because my payment was a day or two late - due to my NOT RECEIVING THE STATEMENT - I was going to be punished with the "Penalty APR" of 27.24%. 27.24%?? Holy Loansharks, Batman!

Credit cards are the new payday loan companies and "Buy Here, Pay Here" Used Car Lots.

This of course caused me to shriek profanities and pick up the phone instantly to call them to Have Words, even as the dogs and cat swirled around my legs bitching for dinner. Some things take precedence, children.

I was nearly hyperventilating by the time I got through the automated crap and talked to a representative and told him I didn't receive that statement and when I noticed I immediately made a payment, and it was only a day or two late, and 27.24%!!!! GAAACK!!!

AMEX was actually very nice. The rep looked at my account and instantly said, "Ignore that. The computer sent it automatically, I am fixing it right now, your interest rate is unchanged," followed by a friendly apology for giving me a nasty surprise for Christmas. So, ultimately, yay AMEX - but of course it's a yay because I've been their customer for decades and always pay my bill on time and still manage to do so. But damn, those news stories about how credit card companies can do this to you if you are JUST ONE DAY LATE are no joke.

In a happier mail story, my new passport is here already! It's certainly flashier than the old one, but the photo isn't nearly as crisp. All that fuss about identifying people and we now use what looks like a fuzzy scanned image, instead of an actual crisp clean photo image. Go figure.