Amazon Store Card First Month Requires Manual Payment

I was charged late fee for not paying my first month statement. I checked online to make sure that I had recurring payments setup which it was. I then checked my email and found each one were sent prior to the end of the pay period.

Note that there will be two emails on the recurring payments. The first will be that you configured it, then it takes a couple weeks (13 days for me) for the company to configure the recurring payments. When that is complete a second email is sent.

Within the second email (yes, the grammar error was also in the email): 

Your request to change your Recurring Payment has been processed for your Amazon.com Store Card account ending in ****. You have selected to pay the the "statement balance" option for your monthly Recurring Payment . Payments will be made from your XXXXXXX account ending in **** on your payment due date.

The last statement would make you think that your first month would be paid on your due date. When I called into support, they said that the first month has to be paid manually. He did waive the late fee and said that the second month would be paid via the recurring payment process. Also to note, I did not have to wait long (maybe 3 minutes) on hold and the service rep was articulate, respectable, and quick.

Side note: If you are ever late on a credit card payment, you can typically call in to have the late fee waived if you typically pay it on time. My mom hated using the internet to pay so would only use the paper statement which for some reason she did not always receive. I have not not had any issues (at least with Visa or American Express) with support to have the fee waived.

Edit (10/13/2015) - You could wait till the next month, but if you don't, sync bank will call every, single day because you have an overdue balance. For how badly they seem to want your money, you think they have a manual trigger to use your automated payment information... but of course, that is not the case, and you have to enter all your bank info again.

This was the second time that I had called to sync bank support. This time to ask why I keep getting the calls because the automated message does not state why you should call the number or visit the website. Surprisingly, the support techs have been knowledgeable in the issues and were able to answer my questions directly and clearly without putting me on hold to ask a manager.

Edit (10/31/2015) - I started calls again but no messages, until very recently. This is when I found that my account had an overdue balance which is very odd because I didn't purchase anything. This is odd because I thought I paid after the last time I called and second I had automatic payment set up.

Well, automatic payment setup was my own error. For some reason my account number was off by a digit... which is odd because I usually copy/paste from the bank site. As for my payment, I could not find any records of my attempt to pay but I am almost positive that I did because I had complained last time that my automatic payment info didn't carry over. I remember having to enter all the information again. So, I'm not sure what really happened. Either way, I found an option to pay manually from the automatic payment so this time I didn't have to reenter any information.

And I really cannot repeat this enough, syncbank's support is just awesome again! Although I am not sure if the support person understood about my attempt to pay a month ago, she still was able to waive the late fee again. This time I made sure to check for emails and confirmations after I posted the payment. Prior to the call, I was seriously going to cancel the card.

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