"Give me back by money!" *

    

I have two credit cards. I rarely ever use them, and when I do, I always pay off the balance. As a result, I have no credit card debt. I'm very proud of this. Despite this example of financial responsibility, I must admit that I am very lazy about checking my monthly statements. I receive paperless statements, and the monthly email notifications tend to pile up in my inbox. I know they're there, and I always have the best intentions of looking at them, but if I'm short on time, and I know I haven't used my card, it's not a priority.

For whatever reason, I was inclined to immediately read one of my statements today when it showed up in my inbox. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I mysteriously had a balance! I owed $1.00. What? How can this be? My card doesn't have fees (please note, that while I had been hearing for weeks about the changes being made to credit cards, I really didn't believe that this would affect ME!). 

Turns out I was being charged an interest fee. Interest on what? I haven't used the card in months! While pondering this perplexity, and scanning the statement for any sort of explanation of this fee, I saw something that nearly floored me. My late fee has been jacked up to $40! So, if I hadn't felt mysteriously compelled to check out my statement today and had just let that thing sit in my inbox with all my other statements, I could have, most likely, in the near-future been looking at a $40! late charge on a $1.00 balance? What? How is this even right? In whose world is this ethical?

I'm definitely going to be calling the company about this interest fee nonsense. If this turns out to be some new fee that I can expect to see every month, someone's going to be hearing about it.

* paraphrased from Mary Poppins. Or quoted. I couldn't remember if these were the correct words or not.