GE Money Bank Sucks!

When we first bought this house in 2007, we had the kitchen, breakfast nook, and foyer flooring (linoleum) removed and had expensive flooring installed through Empire. The floors are nice, but considering the fact that we had the whole living room done with laminate wood flooring in ONE day for almost a third of the price by another flooring company, it was a mistake.

Anyway, Empire finances with GE Money--we figured we would pay it off in the promo period, but other things came up and we decided to take the hit on interest for a while. When we got our tax return this year, we were relieved to be paying off that sucker IN FULL. John was gone and left me responsible for all the bills, so I kept a strict budget and paid a lot of things off. It felt good.
Well, I distinctly remember back in the beginning of February, I went to the GE Money site and selected "make a payment", and then highlighted the "pay balance in full--$4255.53." Thought I was done with it. Now I get an email saying we have a late charge! I thought "hmm..well the minimum payment isn't due until March 1st, and there shouldn't be a balance anyway..whats up with this.." I logged in and saw that they had sneakily charged me a $97 finance charge directly AFTER I paid it off! Even in the list of transactions, it's a finance charge posted after my payment in full. And then on top of that a $30 LATE fee since 3/1...I was so angry and of course it was friday night so i've had the whole weekend to sit and pout about it to John.
I just found a bunch of complaints filed against GE Money for the same type of thing. I am going to call them tomorrow and see what they think they're doing. I am going to be pleasant at first, but I have had a lot of experience being bitchy with people to get them to do their jobs.. (try switching your cable/phone/internet to verizon and directv...geez that was a lot of frustration on the phone!) and I expect I will have to get mad. Don't know if that will even do anything. hope for the best!

UPDATE: I called them this morning and after a 20 minute hold, they told me they can't access my account without John on the phone since he's the primary cardholder, so I am waiting til Wednesday for him to call them. BUT the lady was courteous and when I asked her hypothetically about the bogus finance charge she acted like it was definitely something they can fix. We'll see. In the meantime, I am printing out legal forms to have Power of Attorney over our finances since John will be out a lot this year...to be continued.