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CC interest crediting flawed?

A fraudster bought several items using my credit card details some months ago. The CC company was quick to spot the problem, to block the card and to issue a new one. However, the process of getting those items credited took about three months.

In the meantime I was paying off all the genuine items appearing on statements in full, and was assured that any interest charged against the fraudulent items would be credited by the system when the items themselves were credited. To some extent this has been done, but some of the interest (now amounting to nearly 100 quid) is still uncredited. I believe that this is the compounded interest, although it's rather difficult to check the calculation.

If I'm right, it would seem that the CC company's systems are unable automatically to credit interest which has been compounded on late-credited items. If this is true of other CC companies also then presumably thousands of customers are being overcharged when episodes of fraud or wrongly-charged items are slow to be cleared up. I'm minded to ask the FSA to look into this matter.

However, I would like to hear the opinions and experiences of others before I take that step. Has anyone had compounded interest automatically credited in similar circumstances?

Cheers, Matti

Reply to
Matti Lamprhey
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"Matti Lamprhey" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net...

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When it happened to me the amounts stayed on my statement for 3 months like you, but they were put "into dispute", which meant no interest was charged. I paid my statements in full minus the fraudulent items and no interest appeared on any statements. That's how they should do it (presumably if the disputed items were proved genuine they've have charged backdated interest). Mind you it was few years ago.

It won't be the compounding of the interest that's your problem (that would be fairly trivial over 3 months even at credit card rates). It'll probably be that most credit cards charge interest from either the date of purchase or the statement date up to the payment date

*with a specific exception* if you pay in full. Since you didn't "pay in full" you are getting charged interest on all your normal spending.

So ask them to refund all the interest you paid on your genuine purchases too, since you wouldn't have paid any interest on these had the fraudulent items not appeared on your statement.

Reply to
Andy Pandy

In my case they eventually gave the items a Disputed status and suspended interest on them -- but this was several weeks after they originally appeared.

I suspect you are correct -- although the fraudulent items totalled several thousand quid I was surprised at the level of interest they appeared to give rise to.

Definitely. But what is the implication of all this in the case of someone who doesn't habitually pay all the genuine items in full each month? Would such a person be similarly penalised when the CC company was slow to clear up fraudulent items? And if he _was_ penalised (by suffering higher interest charges than he would have done without the fraud) how easy would it be for him to calculate the overcharging?

Matti

Reply to
Matti Lamprhey

"Matti Lamprhey" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net...

interest

So probably over a statement/payment date, so the the 'paid in full' trigger was not, er, triggered. Meaning you were charged interest on everything. Then the next month, because of the interest charged on your genuine purchases which presumably you didn't pay, the 'paid in full' trigger was not triggered despite the fraudulent items now being in dispute. So basically you're paying interest on everything!

spending.

company

Not too intellectually challenging but quite tedious, a bit like working out whether your current account interest is correct. You'd need to check the interest charging rules carefully (eg if you don't pay in full do they charge from the purchase date or statement date) and the work out the average daily balance subject to interest (on the genuine items) and apply the quoted rate (not APR).

Reply to
Andy Pandy

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