Why am I still paying the cash advance fee on my credit card??

You have to pay it off. Then they will stop charging you the interest and stuff. The cash advance is always the last thing that you will pay off.

During the process of applying for the card there is/are lines asking you if you want them to pay off other credit card debts you have. If you list some, and they approve you, they send the payments to your other cards, and you have gotten cash advances. With an existing card sometimes you get blank checks in the mail (or call and ask) and then you write each check out to whomever, and that is a cash advance - which you then have to pay back. I would question your accuracy re "$0 fee" because the trend now is to offer 0% finance charges for a period of time, but charge a 3% or 4% cash advance fee (so borrowing $1000 for 6 months with a 4% fee = an 8% / yr cost to borrow, plus whatever interest if you do not pay the balance off in full by the end of the free period.) Don't know about using ATM for this purpose. A cash advance loan can make sense in an emergency if it lets you avoid even bigger expenses (like lots of bounced checks or late fees on other cards). If you can truly get a cash advance for $0 fee, and 0% interest, it is a good deal (if you want to go through the steps to get that credit card. - - just saying.)

The credit card may have some sort of policy on how the payments are broken up. Most likely whichever is higher interest rate gets less toward it, because they make more money that way. I'd call them up and see what's going on. Also, ask if you make a separate payment if it could go directly to pay off the remaining cash advance.

Oh, did they ever send you "checks" to use. Those usually count as cash advance. Or if you consolidated another credit card balance to this card - that would also be a cash advance purchase.

The thing that garners them the most cash is the last thing that comes off. Read the fine print that came with your card (or call the credit company and have one sent out). They do it as a percentage because they KNOW it will generate them much more bucks.

The rule is never use a cash advance on a credit card unless it is an emergency (you are on vacation and are short on cash). You will generally pay the equivalent of 40% interest when all the fees are added in unless you had no charges on the card in the first place.

All credit cards will pay the lowest intrest rate off first and since your cash advance is at the highest rate you need to pay off the entire card to get the cash advance off. You can call the credit card and see if they will let you make a payment to that part of the bill but I know the bank I work for will not let you do that. It's never good to use the credit card for cash advance if you need to do a cash advance you should use a seprate credit card than the one you use for you purchases.

The credit card company always takes payment against charges first and advances second, so if you've carried a balance for 2 years (even with making on time payments) you've never zero'd out the non-cash advance, so you continue to pay interest.

You CAN send a separate payment and DIRECT the CC company to apply it to the cash advance (or pay it off completely), but it wont happen automatically.

You answered your question with your remark about the crappy interest rate. Generally when there is an interest rate differential on your activity (such as higher rate for ATM withdrawal), the card company allocates your payments to the CHEAPER interest rate portion of your debt, thus extending the life of that profitable high-interest rate portion of the debt as long as possible. It's not a first-in-first-out thing, it's a screw-the-customer thing.

They're not stupid -- they do that quite deliberately, and hope you don't notice. Also look out for those cash-advance checks with low interest rates. Same scam in reverse, your payments will pay off that cheap debt first, while they milk you for higher interest on the regular purchases.

You need to pay off you balance in full to clear up the high rate debt, and then never do a cash advance again.

Yea, there shouldnt be any sort of cash advance fee unless your credit card charges you for enabling it. You really need to call the card company and dispute this. Its the only way you can get the problem resolved. You should be able to get credited back some of the charges, but probably not all 2 years worth, usually they'll only go back a couple months.

The cash advance charge should have been a one-time charge. Call the credit card company for that. At this point, if you're not in debt, get a new card and then scratch the old one.

credit comapnies don't pay pay off purchases in the order they are made. they pay off the lower finance carges first.

so a card that charges a higher rate or a fee for a cash advance will pay it off last. in otherword pay off the card completly to get rid of it.

If you call the company you may be able to make an additional payment , after / with your regular monthly payment and then specify where to apply it.