Don’t make your Compass Bank payment early

A little over a year ago I moved my bank account to Compass Bank. Everything has been excellent since then… until today.

Today, I was checking my bank account online and I found that there was a late charge on my Credit Card statement. This seemed odd to me since I have made regular payments. The Compass Credit Card statement comes in the mail, not electronically, and isn’t even visible through the online interface. Since I can’t see the statements online, I typically just pay more than the minimum amount monthly and don’t worry about the actual due dates. This hasn’t ever been a problem until this month.

Between June 20 and August 10th I made three payments, all about three times the monthly payment. Unfortunately, the second payment, made in the first week of July, was ONE DAY before the actual date of the statement.

Looking at my account, I assumed this was the issue, so I called the Compass credit card people. After entering my credit card number into the phone four times, going through several levels of menus, explaining the situation multiple times to the young woman that finally answered and being on hold for about 20 minutes, she explained the situation. The payment was early (which I already assumed), so she couldn’t refund the late payment fee.

Just to clarify, I was penalized by the Compass Bank credit card division for making a payment a day early. Insane.