Thread: Are these late fees by Chevron Texaco Buisness Card legal? It has to be fraudulent.

When calculating late fees Chevron defines "New Balance” to mean the total of the charges to your account for your billing cycle (irrespective of what your actual balance is) and any future purchases made for the next billing cycle.

For example, let us say that in your January statement you made charges of $1000.00 to your account and you sent them a payment for $999.00 leaving you with a balance of $1.00. This short payment will result in a late fee because you did not pay the card in full. The Chevron Cardmember terms then say that you will be charged a late fee based upon your "New Balance". This means that Chevron will charge you a late fee on your following statement based on $1000 plus any purchases leading up to the next billing cycle. For example, if you made charges of $500 leading up to your next statement, your late fee will be based on $1000.00+$500.00=$1500.00. This essentially means that even though you made a payment of $999.00 you will still be charged interest on that amount plus future charges that have yet to appear on your statement.

I asked the account specialist about the definition of “New Balance” on February 18, 2010 and where in my Cardmember Agreement I could find the definition and the Account Specialist said that the term is not defined anywhere in the Cardmember Agreement. Furthermore, she said that the definition was “redefined internally” by Chevron on January 25th (two days before my January bill due date). I then asked her why I hadn’t received an update on this change and she said that I was either emailed or mailed the update, but I never actually received this update. She went on to contradict herself later though by stating that the term “New Balance” is not defined in the Cardmember Agreement so even if I look through it, I won’t find an explanation and that it is impossible for them to define every term.

Is it legal for them to do this? Has anyone here had a similar issue? I've filed a complaint with the FTC and I'll be mailing out my complaint to consumer affairs. If you have had this problem with Chevron let me know. I'm angry enough about it that I'd love to get a whole bunch of users together to do something.

From my recollection the Credit Card Reform Act stipulated how interest and late fees shall be calculated. I would verify the rules to see if this is permitted.

We had a different issue with the Chevron card but is related to interest too. I think this is a fraud. The payment was $86.00 and they said, it arrived 1 day late.They charged us $41.00 dollars for the $86.00 (that is nearly 50%.) I called them to ask for a waiver of this charge because our company always pays on time, but they didn't want to do it. I asked for a supervisor to call me back. they never did, only when I called the third time, somebody called us back and she was rude and never waived this charge. We had been clients with chevron for more than 25 years, but they preferred to loose a client rather than forgive an unjustified fee. We canceled the credit card.

I have heard a lot of negativity against gas station credit cards. Are most problematic like this?

Most gas companies sold off their credit card operations years ago. Now those operations are run by shady companies that just exploit people with bad credit. Get a visa or mastercard (or amex) and buy your gas with that.