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.