DOUDOU1980

The deadline is 3 days ago. The amount is small, less than usd100. This is my first time. I paid it immediately. Citibank charged me the late payment fee $15. Will this late payment be reported to credit agency? What should I do now to avoid that? many thanks!

StartinSanDiego

No, it shouldn't be reported as late (need to be 30 days late or more) to the credit agencies. If I have a long history with a company, I call and ask to have the late charge waived. They nearly always will waive the late fee (once a year or so) if you have a prompt payment history.

You can set up an auto pay debit for all your cards. Generally a good idea at least for the minimum payments, but I have all mine set up to pay the balance in full every month. Log in on line and follow the prompts on the payment page.

jdtravel

StartInSanDiego summed it up perfectly.

LizzyDragon84

You may also get hit with a finance charge on the amount. But since it was less then $100, it shouldn't be much.

tev9999

Yes - just call the number on the back of your card and ask for forgiveness. I had this happen once when I was carrying a huge 0% balance where one late payment would trigger a 29% default rate. The waived the charges and rate hike, and I became much more careful about tracking my credit card shenanigans.

ramosz83

This happened to me last month. I got a call from citi, automated, and said if I paid over the phone now that they would waive the fees. I think if you call they will help you out.

GetawaysRus

And after you say your mea culpas to Citi, and ask for forgiveness, it would be very easy to set up AutoPay with Citi. You can set up your credit card account so that the bills are paid automatically (Citi will draft the money from your checking account) on the due date. Very easy to do, and no worries that you'll ever have a late fee again.

texasguy77

You can also make use of account alerts and receive notifications by text or email of your due date

sdsearch

That would be eaiser if Citi would let you set that up once for all the cards in your account. But no, Citi requires you to se everything on every card separatly, and even to have separate logins for many cards. So it can confusing to keep track of, esepcially if you're churning Citi a lot. (And Citi's the bank that lets you the churn the fastest, as fast as 2 every 65 days for some of their cards!)

And I don't remember about Citi specficially, but osme of the alerts from other creidt card companies are ridiculous. At least one bank sends me a reminder that my payment is due even when no payment is due! (In other words, when I open the email I find out when my minimum payment of $0.00 is due!) If that's a card you use only occasionally, that can turn into a "cry wolf" scenario...

DOUDOU1980

thank you all for kind information. Before i did set up autipay, but since bluebird, you know the reason.

sannmann

This is great information. I've had a Citi credit card in some form since 2005. Have never been late making a payment; but, if I ever do, I now know to appeal the late fee.

clarkjardon

Well, you can call the Citibank support team as suggested by other members and can ask for forgiveness. They may consider your request and may not notify it to the CRA but provided you have a good credit history overall and you make payments on time. Generally, a one late payment within two or three months should not drastically affect your credit score however; repeated late payments will definitely lower down your credit score.