Latefee Avoidance

Introduction to Website and Its Features

Because of the change in political climate, permitting the major corporations to do almost anything they want (which means to make money anyway they can), various statutes have been enacted, or construed by the court, to allow banks, credit card companies, other financial institutions, leasing companies, landlords and others to assess unreasonable charges, or assess charges unreasonable in amount, against consumers. These charges generally are made by reason of a late payment by the consumer; an insufficient bank balance to cover one or more checks drawn by the consumer; an outrageously excessive interest rate for moneys borrowed by the consumer; a one-time "transactional fee" for obtaining a credit-card cash advance; mandatory, excessive insurance charges for using bank-account overdraft protection; and various other fees, interest rates and other charges imposed on the hapless consumer, whose vote in national elections no longer results in any meaningful representation.

This website is designed to permit the consumer to offset as much of these outrageous fees, interest rates and other charges as possible, by providing a management system designed to reduce or eliminate such fees, rates and charges. In 2004, consumers paid $15 billion in late fees to banks and credit-card companies, the biggest money-maker of all the types of fees charged by financial institutions. Late fees are something which can and should be avoided by consumers.

Here is a list of abuses by the leading credit-card issuers (who are far more apt to be committing these abuses than smaller banks and their credit cards):

• Excessive late-fee charges ranging from $20 to $40 or more;
• Excessive cash-advance fees, such as $10 to borrow $100 for 1 month (a 1,200% rate of interest exceeds by 30 times the usurious rates that has seen thousands of loan sharks incarcerated for sentences of perhaps 3-10 years under the usury laws of most states);
• Excessive interest rates ranging up to 2,000% or more, imposed happily as to almost any pretext, such as learning from a competitor that you were 1 minute late in making a $5 payment;
• Reduced time frames (sometimes 7 to 10 days) between the arrival of your monthly statement and the date before which your payment is required to be received, in the right manner, by the credit-card company or its agent; I said before which in the preceding sentence because some credit-card issuers require payment to be received by a certain hour of the day, such as 2:00 p.m.;
• Recognizing payment for the largest amount first so that the maximum number of over-limit charges can be made when a credit-card holder exceeds his/her credit limit, and imposing an over-limit fee on many transactions instead of the one largest charge; e.g., assume a $1,900 bank balance; the bank may put your largest check ($1,900) through first and then return your 4 other checks for $5 each, charging you 4 returned-item fees of $35 each (instead of just 1 fee); or the bank may pay such checks and charge you 4 charges (instead of 1) for checks exceeding your balance;
• Making so many deductions for outrageous fees that the credit-card holder has less available credit and goes sooner into over-limit charging, to trigger additional fees;
• Failing to explain clearly these practices so that a credit-card holder can try to avoid them;
• Also, to generate late charges on mortgage payments banks will often take a borrower's attempt to make a monthly payment in advance (to ensure there is no late payment for a change), and consider that such payment is a reduction in the principal amount of the mortgage (possibly with some type of charge), but more importantly be able to assess a late fee (or two or three) against the borrower until the borrower realizes that he/she is behind on the mortgage payments because the bank considered an earlier payment as a reduction of principal;
• Other practices to be added to this list when reported by you and other consumers.
• Specifically, this website provides, with your input and assistance, the following email notification features: 7xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

• Monthly Email Notices to Yourself -- email notification that you must make payment as to a specific credit card (identified to you by its last 4 digits), lease, installment obligation, maintenance charge or other monthly obligation, as warning to you that unless you make the payment by a certain date you will probably incur an unnecessary late fee or similar charge.

• Specified Date One-Time Email Notices to Yourself -- one-time email notification to you, sent to you a number of days (as specified by you) in advance of a one-time or annual event you wish to do something about, such as birthdays, anniversaries, lease or other contractual renewals, subscription renewals, medical appointments, dental appointments, passport or license renewal, motor vehicle inspection or registration renewal, graduation, retirement, and any other annual or distant appointment or date that you wish to be notified about, for whatever reason.

• Hour-Based One-Time Email Notices to Yourself -- one-time email notification to you, given so many days, hours and minutes (calculated by you in hours, such as 2.3 hours or 352.6 hours) after this website's receipt of your request, to remind you of events scheduled to take place at a specified day and time, such as a 10:15 a.m. appointment, a parking meter to expire in 1 hour, a 7:30 p.m. performance at a movie or theatre, a 9:00 p.m. television show, a promised 11:00 a.m. call to your parents or offspring, or any number of other calender activities or events during a day or within the next 367 days which you wish brought to your attention by email (with requests not accepted beyond the period of 367 days).

• List of Credit Card Features -- email notification to you periodically and upon demand listing pertinent facts about each of your credit cards to help you choose which card to use and which card(s) not to use, as to different types of possible transactions; the information, provided by you from time to time (probably at the time you are writing your monthly checks to the credit card companies), includes (i) rate of interest on purchases; (ii) rate of interest on cash advances; (iii) transactional charges or fees on cash advances; (iv) minimum late fee; (v) formula for assessing other than the minimum late fee; (vi) rebates and discounts; and (vii) your comments on when you should or should not use the card [Note: only the last 4 digits of the cards are to be provided by you.]

• Periodic Reminder with URL Link of a Website You Want to Visit Regularly -- There are often times when you would like to return to a website and would like to be reminded; also, you may not be able, easily, to remember the precise website address, especially when the use is occasional and the address is long or near-gibberish; this feature allows you to to get a reminder, through receipt of an email according to a cycle set by you, with the email containing a link to the website making it easy for you to click on the link and reach the website in accordance with your desired schedule, and without having to remember the name of the site or its address (URL).

• Log for auto servicing and repairs -- A copy of the log or service alerts are emailed to you periodically or upon request, as a way for you to save money on your car expenses and extend the life of your car.

The Website Features Are More Convenient to Users

Although you could probably create these notification emails yourself, with enough time and programming skills, you would be better off using the website for a variety of reason: (i) it is free; (ii) your information is stored for your access from any online computer; (iii) you don't have to recall the name of each or any of the files or in what subdirectories the files and related programs are located. All you have to do is go to the website, log in, and go to the options of your choice.

If You Have a Choice, Use the Least Onerous Credit Card

It should go without saying, that you should use the credit card that costs you the least. Yet, if you have only one credit card, you obviously don't have much of an immediate choice. Perhaps you should sign up for additional cards.

When you do have multiple cards, you should start comparing the precise terms that you are being given, remembering that the low interest rate that induced you to sign up for a card months ago has probably converted already into one of the highest rates of interest for purchases and cash advances.

We suggest that the best way for you to manage your credit cards is to extract information from your monthly statement for each card and update your own page in this website, and then email the results to you for your use. You will see which cards to use for cash advances (the ones that charge no transaction fee) and which to use for purchases (the lowest interest rate for purchases) and even lower interest rates and some rebates for special types of purchases.

Follow these factors and you will wind up keeping more of your money and beat the greedy banks and credit-card issuers.

Along that line, you should probably consider using a small commercial bank for your personal and small-business accounts. The benefits are substantial, including lower banking fees, and in some cases (such as First Republic Bank) the bank picks up all ATM fees (through reimbursement of 100% of them to your bank account), to make up for the fact that it does not have hundreds or thousands of branches or many branches for that matter. It invites you to use the branches of the monopolizing banks, and will reimburse you for their ATM charge when you obtain cash from another bank's ATM.

You are invited to file complaints with us against your banks and credit-card issuers, with the hope that this may induce them to resolve the problem, in which case the website will remove the complaint (upon your request).

Also, you are invited to subscribe to updating emails from the website to give you tips on using your banks and credit cards to your maximum advantage. Just sign up for email updates or RSS (which means Really Simple Syndication).

And, of course, take advantage of the various types of email notices we offer to send to you, to enable you to receive prompts telling you that you must do something to avoid a late fee or other penalty on any number of financial matters, including credit card payments, mortgage payments, rent payments, maintenance payments, car lease payments, other installment obligations, tax withholding payments -- you name it yourself and set up an early warning system as to each monthly obligation as to which you could be assessed a penalty or late fee -- or worse, have your credit with other lenders adversely affected and allowing them to charge you higher interest and fees.

Register now! It takes no more than a minute or two.