This is the fourth in a series of posts on my experiences with credit card arbitrage. See others here: Part 1,Part 2 ,Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
First the good news: I got a check form Amex in the mail today for the amount of my positive balance. I tried to deposit it online but ran afoul of $5K deposit limits. I'll mail it in tomorrow.
The bad news is that a finance charge occurred. I'm not really sure why, so I called customer service. Actually, I emailed them. They've been good to me in the past so I hope this can be resolved easily. Hope is not a strategy however, and if I can't get the finance charge revoked there is always Plan B.
Plan B is to repay all the money borrowed once the check from Amex clears, and try again to take advantage of the 0% APR offer once I figure what I did wrong. I still should have at least 30 days. It will take some cash form my cash cushion to accomplish the pay off, but I will be worth it. This could be considered a fiscal emergency right?
I suspect the finance charge is related to the cash advance I took for $2500 to pay off the car. A balance transfer and a convenience check are basically cash advances as well, so I don't know why it should be different. Pretty much every credit card company puts payments toward the lowest APR first, so I would have to payback everything borrowed to actually eliminate future finance charges.
Comments