Financial Services > Credit Cards > Credit Cards News

Surprise charges trapping credit card customers

Tue, 16 Jun 2009

Recent credit card news indicates that many credit card customers are being trapped in debt by surprise charges. The charges occur when a cardholder is paying off a balance from previous months, according to the report.

The credit card companies call these charges trailing interest – a levy on any negative balance between the issuance of the last statement and the customer paying the balance. Top-up charges are issued.

A spokeswoman for Egg reportedly commented: "Interest is charged on the outstanding balance between our issuing the statement and the payment being made. We request payment via your direct debit 14 days after the statement date. Direct debits cannot be called over a weekend so if a customer's direct debit is due to leave their account on a Saturday or Sunday, we'll move the payment date to Monday. The longest they'll go between statement date and paying their account is 16 days (18 if their payment date falls over the Easter weekend). If the interest amounts to less than 50p we top up the charge so it equals that amount."

The charge is likely to be unknown to most credit card customers.
add to favouritesnewsletterlink to this pagesend to friendpost comments

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.

Choose a credit card

Choose the perfect card

Choose the right credit card for you and apply with confidence.

Choose a credit card