I recently overpaid my credit card bill last month and was wondering if anyone had any insights on how to get refunded for this charge?
Hi,
Firstly don’t worry, nothing too serious happens if you overpay. You can get back your money in one of two ways: (1) Either call up a customer representative at your local bank, informing them of this and getting a written/email confirmation for full refunding, or (2) You can ask for credits that can be applied towards your next credit card purchase. Under Federal Law, banks are required to refund any over-paid credit payments to you and often their timeline varies from immediate to 7-10 days.
The only problem may be that transacting that much (if you overpay highly) can cause banks to issue warning and freeze your credit cards due to perception of potential fraud, and all this does is delay it a bit more. Also just something to note: your credit score isn’t affected (not even in your favor) and you won’t earn any interest on your transactions.
Some people also think that overpaying your credit card bill to the point where you have a negative balance is a hack to quickly improving your credit score. However, this is just a myth and is NOT true at all.
The idea here is that you will have a low balance-to-credit-limit ratio which will be seen by the credit bureaus and ultimately raise your score. This is not how it works so purposefully overpaying your credit card bill is not advisable. Your lending financial institution cannot report a negative balance, only a $0 balance, so the credit bureaus will have no way of knowing that you even overpaid in the first place.