I thought I knew how the finance charges on my credit card were being accrued but today I found out that I was absolutely wrong.
I had an Equitable Visa card which was easy enough to manage, in case I decided not to pay the unpaid balance in full on the due date, I accrued a finance charge which I arrived at by just multiplying my unpaid balance with 3.25%.
I had always figured that it remained the same after the transition and that I’d be using the same computation, and that any charges made after the transaction date wouldn’t accrue finance charges unless not paid in full by the next due date.
I was so wrong. And mighty pissed.
I never received any sort of notice from BDO about the changes in their policy. It would’ve been nice to know that I would be accruing finance charges for those transactions made AFTER the due date as well. Say I leave a P1000 balance in my credit card, and charge P50,000 after the previous month’s due date but before the next month’s due date, the finance charge would actually be based on P51,000 and not the P1,000 as you would think!
That’s essentially what happened to hapless ol’ me.
I left a meager amount as my outstanding balance instead of paying it in full, unconcerned because according to my computations, I would only be paying a little more than P50 as finance charge. It wasn’t worth the hassle to go haring off to the bank to pay the rest of it in full when I had so much on my plate at the time.
Then I made a number of charges making my bill total about 10x more than what I had left, resulting in a bill which included a finance charge of close to P1000!!!
That’s a hell of a lot more than the amount that I thought I’d be paying.
While a thousand is easily affordable, I hate the thought of having thrown that money away. My goal for the past two years has been to be more fiscally responsible, even more so now that I have yet to start working while incurring liveing expenses left and right.
I hate BDO. I hate, hate, hate, HATE BDO.
I’ve had previous encounters with BDO re: changes in policies that I remained ignorant of (such as changes in statement due dates that I missed because I paid the day after the statement date and had no idea the date changes every now and then because I DIDN’T GET MY BILL FOR THE MONTH — WTF right?)
Really makes me think twice about keeping my BDO stock shares. I was planning on holding on to them till after the stocks regain their previous value but I’m soooo hating BDO right now.
Hate. Hate.
