Explain why…

You’ve authorized your car payments to be autodeducted from your bank account by the loan company for years now, so you haven’t had any sort of late payment. You get so used to that amount coming out on that day every month, that you don’t even open the bills they send you anymore.

Should you then be surprised when you get an early morning phone call from the company saying that your payment is 19 days overdue and when are you going to pay it? Why didn’t you just autodeduct it, I asked them. Their reply: because it is your final payment on the car, and we’re not allowed to automatically deduct the final payment on a loan.

News to me, though probably in one of those paper bills they’ve been sending me… though, no. It says final payment, but not “final payment that we cannot autodeduct.” Somebody could have mentioned when I’d signed up for the autodeduct that at the end of the loan, they would try to stick me with a late payment on my credit just for fun if I didn’t pay attention.

But hey, on the bright side, soon as this check for the August payment clears, car is paid off.