Experience using the “Custom Pay Plan” for Bank of America

A few months ago, I got to use the Custom Pay Plan for a home improvement project and here are my take aways from that experience.

First, why I used it?

To experiment for one since this is a new method provided by my bank that I have not seen or heard before and two, the charge was for relatively small amount for a home improvement project that was a need of urgency, but not exactly within normal budget, about 1600 dollars, for a water heater and some pipe work. On the Bank of America app I chose to opt in into this thinking it would be like a "pay later" sort of thing, which to its credit it technically is.

Now the few issues

A few issues came up that certainly caught me off guard, one being that once approved and the statement comes in all previous payments are treated as an "balance transfer" sort of thing which you have to pay off in order not to get charged interest on those payments. The other was that although you payment is meant to be broken up it was not on my statement, at least its not what I understood to be. Since when you are given the balance to pay off it gives you 2 options to pay; one option is the interest free and the other would be you payment plan, but again its almost the same. Another issue that is that from what I understood is that you can pay you remaining balance to not get the payment plan fee of about 1.7% on the next bill cycle, however I could not get that to work exactly the way I though and still got charged the remaining fee. On my statement after all all charges and fees the "custom pay plan" calculator is on there and pretty much forces you to pay this fee by doing some weird calculation that makes it a little difficult to see. It basically is your statement minus what you supposed to pay ( I though I had paid in full) and re adds it to your balance again, if that makes sense. It didn't to me and and the representative I called at BoA but that is how I got charged the monthly fee anyway.

Conclusion

After knowing all this I would use it again if a few conditions are met.

1. That credit card has to have very little to no Balance on it if you decide to make a big purchase
2. Know that you WILL pay that fee for the length of the of the terms you agreed to
3. If the fee every month is less than the APR and willingness to pay on since is 1.7% of the total amount every month. In my case was 27 dollars plus the interest charged on the other charges

I paid a fee so you do not have to. Do not be me and more than likely skip this for maybe a Balance assist from Bank of America instead