An Evil Way To Delay Credit Card Payments
Business Financial Management

An Evil Way To Delay Credit Card Payments

I’m actually surprised that I was asked on whether or not I know any “evil” ways that people use to procrastinate in paying one’s credit card bills. I have always been a person who pays my credit card bills in full every month so I never tried things such as people using a different credit card in order to pay another for example. Out of humour I was trying to think if there was a crazy thing people could do though.

Just to be clear too, it’s best to just clear your debt as I personally believe when it comes to credit cards if you can’t afford the product then you shouldn’t be using credit to buy it in the first place as that means you simply can’t afford it. Thinking back I do remember one thing that I kind of noticed by accident when it came to paying off my monthly bill. Essentially, there was a time I made a big purchase where I ended up having to exchange the product. This resulted in having to return the product to the store and then purchasing another one. So as usual in your statements you would get credit for the return purchase and then charged a new transaction for the new purchase.

The funny thing I noticed is that the credit I received from the refund actually acted as a payment for my most recent statement. So if you think about it, this kind of postpones my previous month’s bill to next month. Theoretically you can continue the cycle with the way a lot of credit cards work. However, the merchants are the ones that would get hammered with the credit card fees.

Here is a more clear example. Let’s say your credit card billing cycle is on the 15th of every month and your bill was $500. Afterwards they give you say until the the 1st day of the next month to pay the bill or you will accumulate interest charges. Now let’s say on the 16th you purchased like a TV for $500 just to then return it a day later. Assuming there is no delay in the process, on your card it will be posted as a $500 credit. A lot of card companies don’t differentiate it. Therefore, while you obviously still have to pay $500 eventually, right now the statement acts as if that $500 credit paid off your previous month’s bill. Now the bill looks as if you have to pay for that TV still by the next deadline.

Obviously this won’t be true in every case such as if the card company actually separates credit versus an actual bill payment. At the same time, I suppose reasons like this is why many businesses implement things like a “restocking fee” as it does cost them money to do the transaction. That is the only real “evil” way I can think of though in terms of people trying to purposely delay a credit card payment while trying to avoid fees. Again though, you should just be paying them off in full every month. At the same time, as the business owner it is difficult to implement a way to stop people from doing that without having whatever policy you are implementing not affect others as well.

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