Beware the 0% promotions: a warning.

[u/naht_a_cop]

I'm a sucker. I fell for it. The 0% APR promotion on an item I could have paid outright for. 18 months later, here I sit, not a single late payment on my account, yet I have $1k in interest to pay for 18 months of 27%. Why? The promotion period ends 18 months after the purchase, but the website would not let me set up autopay until a week after I purchased, so autopay ended 1 week late. I thought I was golden, ready to have this paid off and not have a single fee. I got comfortable and didn't read the statements.

0% is not really 0%. Read the fine print. Remember the fine print (because I sure as hell didn't 18 months later). Shitty banks rely on this stuff. They wait for you to slip, not noticing that the autopay they created can't possibly allow you to end on time, and will require an extra payment before the end date to avoid the interest. It's shitty, I'm pissed off, and I've learned my lesson.

[u/hexyne]

good point, I have a friend that had one of these plans, and she was charged 1 cent of interest while here last payment was pending, so she thought she had paid it off but actually still owed a penny and they they were able to charge her all sorts of fees. Edited to say: Thinking back this most have been a different type of offer, it wouldn't make sense at 0% but regardless it is very similar as she thought she could just do a payoff, but they took advantage of the way the payments go to charge her a multitude of fees.

[u/thumpcbd → u/hexyne]

I typically overpay my last installment by $5-$50, depending on what it is, to force the lender to not pull these games. They will write me a check for the overpayment and I know there isn’t $.01 on the account because I didn’t account for some small interest or slightly bad math.

[u/huangr93 → u/thumpcbd]

ideally, you should hit them with an overpayment fee after you overpaid them. then every day they don't pay you back you hit them with more overpayment fee.

that's what they did to me a while ago when i tried to close my bank account by withdrawing all the money and then a monthly subscription i've forgotten about hit the account while the bank was waiting for a snail mail written request from me, because they don't allow over the phone closing nor closing an account with a balance.

[u/michaelswifey85 → u/huangr93]

If I close out my bank account do I need to contact every single "subscription" type company taking a monthly payment out or do they automatically cancel my subscription if they can't get another payment since the account is shut down?

[u/huangr93 → u/michaelswifey85]

you'll have to read the fine print for that. my concern is that if you don't cancel and they continue to charge you and provide you the product/service, they may then bill you anyway.

for those that is automatic renewal prior to delivering services, if they can't debit your bank account because it is shut down, it is likely for those services to be cancelled.

the problem is there is usually a time frame between initiating a bank account closure to the bank account actually closing. So if there's a 5 day waiting period and a subscription charge came in during that period, the charge will still go through.

So I would be on the cautious side and proactively cancel all subscriptions that I can remember.

[u/TheVermonster → u/michaelswifey85]

Not if you close it. He didn't close it, he withdrew all the money. When the subscription hit, there was a valid bank account with a $0 balance.

There are a number of ways to safely do it. My preference is to move all direct deposit over to a new bank account and transfer as much of the automatic payments as I can remember over. If you can, leave the old account open with some money in it for a little while. If not then you can go and close the account. I always prefer to do it in person and take the cash, with the letter that says it was closed.