Charge of Late Fee

I received my monthly statement for January. There was a $29.00 charge for late payment. I mailed the payment at the latest on 1-1-07 for a 1-06-07 due date. The fact that the mail service was shut down for one additional day for the Ford funeral was apparently the trigger that caused my payment to be posted on 1-07-07. When I contacted customer service to see if the postmark date would support this, the rather bored person on the other end of the phone simply said that the envelopes were not kept. When I asked if there was any way to reverse this late payment fee, on a payment made in full-the only response was silence. The only option I have then is to close the account, because the payment center can not process the payments in a fashion that might assist the customer. I would like to know if the volume of payments processed and late fees charged was higher due to the postal service or did the payment center work extra hours to process all the payments-after the only proof of attempt to pay on time was destroyed. The only way I have to express my disappointment is to close the account. This will help me shop elsewhere. This will also help that bored customer service agent at the 1-800 number deal with fewer inquires for help.

I will take the late payment fee to my local store, you can be sure that I will ask for a dated receipt.

When I asked for the card to be cancelled-the response was-the form will be sent to you in 7 to 14 days. No attempt to retain a customer in any way. I will complete and return the closed account paperwork. I will also check my credit report to show that I closed the account and not that it was closed by the issuer.

Perhaps the next victim of this customer service agent will be more lucky than I was.