the times of kryptoniteglows

I got my Dell Preferred Account bill the other day and the first thing I notice are extra lines on it, charging me for finance charges! I used Bank of America’s online bill pay system to make my payment the previous month (in full), so I initially thought that perhaps they were late paying or something like that. However, I recalled making sure to have the payment submitted a week before it was due to ensure it wouldn’t be late.

I dig up my previous statement to get the due date, which was 4/13. My payment was credited to the account on 4/7 so it doesn’t make sense for financing charges. I pick up the phone and go through their automated system like 3-5 times before I can get to some person in India.. Took me a few times because they don’t allow you to just press 0 and the live operator option is only announced after a delay after they finish their automated options. I hate sneaky stuff like that, they already have an Indian rep, they could at least make them reachable… Anyway, during the whole spiel I noticed what happened and to the rep ’s credit, they also noticed pretty quickly.

3/17 I bought a DSLR ~$600
Sometime, rather soon I get a bill from them (statement was cut on 3/19), I schedule a payment for 4/7.
3/31 I buy a computer ~$500
4/7 Dell gets their payment
4/19 New statement is cut with finance charges

When I bought the computer, they had some 0% interest for 9 months promotion. When payments are applied to a credit account, they are applied to balances with lowest interest first. So instead of applying my $600 payment to previous month’s balance of the DSLR, they applied $500 to the new computer purchase and only $100 to my DSLR. This resulted in the finance charges for the $500 balance! Anyhow the rep says he sees what my intention was and he’ll apply my payment to the previous balance… I guess it is taken care of now, but irked me since I didn’t select the 0% interest offer thingy at all, they applied it automatically. Not to mention if I were not paying more attention to my statement, I may have paid their crummy finance charges.

So I’ve been looking at places the last few weeks and finally found something that was mostly acceptable. Initially put down an offer that was 10% below the list price thinking sales aren’t exactly hot, but then there were 9 more offers in like no time at all! Then there were 11 offers.. Upped my offer to over list just before their deadline.

In the end, someone else made a significantly higher cash offer! Don’t know what their offer was but agent tells me we should know fairly quickly because it is cash sale. Looking at other properties now, I kinda wish I put down a larger offer because other places cost more even in crappy locations with blah houses. This one actually had a garage, screened porch, basement, 2 full bathrooms, and an already fenced yard that would be perfect for a doggy. On the other hand the 3 bedrooms were kinda small and I would likely have had to knock down a wall or live in the basement room that kinda scares me… There was a weird random fireplace in the basement too.

I might look at a townhouse this weekend but I kinda don’t like my house being stuck to someone else’s house. No driveway or garage also suck.. There are parking spaces in front of the house, but nothing saying they are yours…

Oh and my parents somehow bought a place before me, think I might have put down a little more on that first house if they hadn’t already bought a place of their own. My dad was actually telling me to go for it while my mom seemed rather reluctant on it. Heh, we might have fought over this house if they hadn’t bought their place a week before.