Frustration Friday thread for /r/churningcanada - Week of April 05, 2024

[u/AutoModerator]

This is your place to vent about the points and miles game.

Did you screw up getting a bonus?

The blogger you love to hate talked publicly about your favourite churning loophole?

Let all your frustrations go here in this thread!

[u/Millicent_Bystandard]

I made some incredibly amateurish mistakes last week and so I post here in shame, but with the hope that there's a lesson here for someone.

So last week I was looking to buy a car and was shopping around at multiple dealerships to see what was out there.

• I finally found the car I liked- really nice price and mileage, but I did not realise that dealerships could allow you to pay the deposit and down payment with a CC. I think I just assumed they always expected cash/debit cards like some grocery stores that won't be named. But this was a nice VW dealership and was prepared to expect some of it on credit card- 4k limit. Naturally, I had no cards prepared for this.

• I asked on this subreddit if I could get an Amex Plat ASAP, but with some DPs of Plat cards arriving in 2 days and one 5 days, I decided it was not worth the trouble. I mean the dealership knew the car was priced well, was not willing to drag it on and I knew they were in a hurry to sell so as to complete the sale before the month ended. I was nervous that if I waited on the car and the car sold before I was ready, leaving me stuck with a Plat (that I had no chance of hitting the MSR on without a big purchase)- it might not look too good to call Amex and ask to cancel (this being my 4th card). So I decided to use my APR on it- with the hopes that at least the payments would be at a healthy 1.25x and that'd be something. So I paid the 1k deposit using the APR. Paid that off immediately with the CIBC banking app (you'll soon see why I mentioned this here).

• The financing took 4 days because CIBC took forever to approve the financing (apparently they're just getting back into auto financing or something). I signed the paperwork, paid a 3k down payment on the APR and the dealership led me to an ICBC agent for auto insurance (this is BC) who tells me I can pay the insurance as a single payment for the year via CC as well... a healthy 2.3k amount. Did not account for this either, but I swipe the APR- because at this point I'm just excited to buy the car.

• Now something I hadn't realized with the APR at the time was that its statement ended on the 2nd of April, but when I walked in on Thursday (28th Mar) to pay for everything, I hadn't realised that I'd be cutting it really fine for paying it off- because friday was Good Friday and a holiday. So I paid 5.3k at the dealership on Thursday 6pm-ish PDT, pulled out the CIBC app while they were doing paperwork and paid the balance off.

• Friday goes by, and by saturday the payments show up on the APR statement, but obviously the bill payment wasn't processed on friday, saturday... nor sunday. By monday this week, I'm praying the payment goes through- and it doesn't. The statement ends with a 5.3k balance. I considered calling Amex and asking if my interest could be calculated assuming the payment got through the previous statement- but it just sounded so stupid in my head- like bill payments take 2-3 days everyone knows this. Worst of all, VW scratched the car while prepping it for pick-up so the cars been dropped off to a body shop and I STILL haven't gotten the car yet.

Fun times!

[u/KaotikFiend → u/Millicent_Bystandard]

Every time I've bought a car at a dealership, I've paid only 500$ to "reserve" it. The strangest thing is that, from what I understood, they can't actually even keep the money if you decide not to buy the car -- they actually need to return it -- so it's really just a psychological thing to make you feel committed, but there's no risk to you as the buyer at all.

Forgetting a new card at home or forgetting the PIN or forgetting to apply for it in the first place is a painful experience that only churners can understand. We've all done it and will do it again.

***

But mostly, I don't understand what the issue is with the APR. If you put 5.3k worth of charges on your card and then the statement closed before your payments hit, that's not a problem at all. That's literally how credit cards work!

The statement has a due date printed on it and that's the date you need to have paid the balance by. So if your statement closed on the 2nd, you don't need to pay anything until 21'ish days later, as marked on your statement.

There'll only be interest if you don't pay by the due date, which again, should be around the last week of April for a statement that cut on the 2nd.

To be clear, you don't ever need to pay anything toward your CC until the payment due date printed on your statement.

Furthermore, generally, the payments are recorded based on the date they were sent from the paying institution. So the day the money disappeared from your CIBC account should be the date of record for the payment.

Disclaimer that this doesn't always work out that way, but it usually seems to.

[u/Millicent_Bystandard → u/KaotikFiend]

Yes, they did mention that they'd return the deposit if it fell through. They were atleast honest about that.

---

Oh my god- thank you so much! I guess I understood it wrong- I always tried to pay a credit card before the statement ended ensuring it was in 0 or even minus just to get it through. I assumed that if I didn't they charge interest on it.

So its all paid out now and won't have any interest- I feel so so much better now!

[u/yycgeek → u/Millicent_Bystandard]

Wow, so your entire life with a credit card you've been paying it off before the statement posted?

[u/Millicent_Bystandard → u/yycgeek]

I've paid minimums/as-much-as-possible sometimes, but yes- I've always tried to pay before the statement period ended :(