I was recently offered a 12 month interest free balance transfer if I opened up a new Wachovia Visa Card I thought what a great offer!. Subsequent to opening the card I made several small charges but always made sure that I did not incur any interest charges by making payments in the full amount of the charges. Today I discovered a $13 finance charge and a $3.50 cash charge on the card. I was confused because I had so carefully paid off all new charges every month. I called the bank and was informed that the reason for the charges was that any time I made a payment it was applied to the balance transfer monies and not to the balance from the charges that I had made. These have been happily building up over time, and I have been thinking I had paid them. Ultimately this system now puts me in a situation where there is no way I can ever pay off the new charges without paying off the entire balance transfer first. This was not made clear to me over the phone when I made the initial transfer. This appears to me to be a trap that a consumer cannot get out of because they can never pay their way out no matter how punctual you are on your payments. I find this practice disgusting. I was told by the bank employee and their supervisor that there was no way that they could make this right and put me where I am supposed to be. I spend about 30 minutes on the phone with them and was shocked by their lack of willingness to work with me. I am sure that the small print somewhere outlines this practice, yet frankly there was no explanation up front, and I feel that I was tricked. I have been a customer of this bank since 1984 and it is unreasonable for them to not be willing to work with me, even on the assumption that I made a mistake because i fell into their trap they will not NOT help me to make it right. This is not alot of money but there is a huge principle involved. I am trying to start up a new business and cashflow is critical right now so i cannot really just dump the balance into the credit card to get out of the situation so I will continue to be charged until I am able to do this. This practice goes beyond disgusting because there it no way out. I wonder how many people they have trapped this way.