Thread: Minimum payment due date

Perhaps I'm being a little on the slow side with this question, and if its been covered before – sorry for dragging it up again.

If a store card has a 'minimum payment due date', when is the latest that a late payment can be included in the 'missed' statement?

For example, wife has a Santander provided card for High Street store. The Minimum payment due date is 27th of the Month.

Heres what happened:
> Wife buys some goods from the Store's website 23RD November.
> Makes part payment which arrives with Santander 2nd December.
> Makes next part payment which arrives with with Santander 5th January.

Now part of the problem is the statement received in December was not checked so this could have been spotted earlier :-| Any how it wasn't.
The 1st payment even though it was received 5 days after the minimum payment due date, it was still included in the statement produced 2nd December.

So wife though she had made payments for December and January, the way it ended up for Santander was she paid in November and January and duly got charged £12.00 late fee 27th December. This was argued vigorously and the fee was paid back, but the company maintains they are right. I am not so sure. In the contract the “minimum payment due date” is mentioned several times and what would happen if you don't pay on time but I cannot see anything that states late payment will be penalised with a charge but still be used to pay towards that months outstanding amount? It just seems the due date is just a arbitrary date picked by Santander.

Surely Santander should do one of two things. Either Santander should count the payment received after the due date towards the next statement. OR make the 'minimum payment due date' the date the statements are produced then if the payment is received late it could not be included in the statement? Otherwise if a payment is received and goes into the statement but after 27th, what is it actually late for?

Is it just me, but is this 5 day or so gap between the due date and the statement date being used cynically by Santander (and others probably) to generate income in an underhand manner?

Hi dx,

Thanks for the reply. We've had the fee reversed.

My concern was the the grey area that must be tripping up other people. Some might not be claiming it back so the likes of Santander have a revenue stream on the sly.

Even though the payment was too late using their rules. They used the payment for the month it was supposed to be late for. I suppose it would be like turning up for a train after it was supposed to have gone to find it was still there on platform 4, (wrong sort of snow). You get on. The guard checks your ticket and throws you off for "missing" the departure time, plus keeps the ticket for good measure. ;-)

If they can process the payment - what is it late for? Because they say so?

Cheers

Hi dx,

Hopefully as the refund was sorted quickly they wont have bothered with info to CRA's. Will be checking soon though.

Ttfn