I need your opinion on the incident I encountered recently. Last month, I signed up 3 Installment Plans with zero interest using credit card of XX in 3 different merchants. Last week, I received the CC statement and I found out that there were charges of RM30 twice on the statement. The very following Monday, I called up the respective CC department to find up the reason. The consultant who answered the phone explained to me that there was a one-time "joining fee" on every IP. I also called the merchants to check and surprisingly they were also not aware of the additional charge. I then called the CC department again and asked for a waive on that. I felt like being cheated. How can they charge the customers like that? Should I take legal action against tne credit card department? Any lawyer out there, please advise me what to do?
banks are renowned with hidden costs like that. you can't really do anything about it, unless you want to go full scale attack. ATMs withdrawals in australia can have charges up to $2 each time and not everyone is aware of that; banks try to hide is as much as possible.
I agreed with llpjlau that there is not much you can do. But if you read the detail carefully, you can really take advantage of some of these zero interest credit cards. I did that 3 or 4 times already applying these kind of credit cards to pay off some of my home equality loan balance without paying any interest or application fee for 6 months to 1 year. Then cancel the cards after 1 year. I think the credit card companies really hate customers like me.
Please read between the lines before you apply for a Credit Card. . Banks are very tricky..but its legal. Its good to have a CC for emergency. Its still better to use Cash.
But the thing is it wasn't stated in the agreement that I signed. I've made a complaint and they'll reply me in 3 working days. Wait and see!
As long as it wasn't stated on the agreement that you signed, you won't need to pay for it, since you have not been informed nor agreed to pay for the service charge.
For "goodwill", they agreed to waive "the joining fee" for me but they will still charge on the Installmet Plan to be applied in the future. But I would never use the Installment Plan provided by Standard Chartered again.
llpjlau is right. You prolly can't do a thing unless u want to go for all out for it. This means getting a lawyer to fight a case, which would cost more than what you lost. This is the result of corporate power, where people are deterred from taking on a big, rich company. i've had my fair share of bad experiences from PAYPAL.......i really don't want to get started about it. U might want to run a search and look through hate-sites of credit card companies, or paypal. I learnt a lot from those sites
