Little Mom vs. Big Credit Card Company

Being a dutiful daughter I am helping my mom pay off her credit card debt. For the past 11 months I've been sending my mom $300 per month. What I should have done was asked to see the credit card statement. Had I taken a peek early on I could have help reduce some of our payments, our headaches, and most of our heartaches.
Here's what I found out.

• High interest rate - My mom was paying a 24% annual percentage rate. WOW. No wonder I wasn't getting anywhere with the payment. It used to be 19% but back in October 2009 they raised it to 23.9% without my mom noticing. My mom didn't pay attention since I was paying the bill since July 2009 and she just put my check into the envelope. I had no clue.
• Initial balance - I had no clue where I was starting. As an engineer, I like working with data and I like being able to track my progress. I assumed I was paying off $3,000 worth of CC (credit card) debt, but in reality I started with a $4,000 balance but she also add another $1000 over the next 4 months after I started paying her debt. My mom didn't stop using the card until November 2009.
• Additional purchases - My mom was still using her credit card for another 4 months when I started paying her CC debt. I had asked her about it, but she either forgot or just didn't want to tell me. I like to believe that she forgot she used it while in England on vacation. There was a charge for a $41 international call... twice! That was one expensive phone call from Paris. (Her tour group left her behind at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. That's not fun. She had to call their company headquarters in England via a credit card pay phone to express her severe displeasure.)
• Reward points - My mom accumulated 15,200 reward points in the past few years. I decided that it was high time to trade most of it in for a $100 statement credit. Nice.

Well, after getting her to bring her CC statement when she came to visit I was finally able to learn the truth. I got angry on her behalf. My mom had always paid her bills on time and usually more than the minimum amount. I had no clue why her interest rate was so high. It's unbelievable. I decided to monitor my progress online via her CC's website. The only problem was that I didn't have her security word. Really? I thought I knew the answer, but after talking to the customer service rep, it turns out they probably entered it wrong way back when. My mom never calls them so she never corrected their error.

After verifying her account and a half an hour of talking to them, my mom managed to straighten out the error via getting irritated and threatening to move the balance to another card. They ended up changing her security word AND lowering her APR to 13.99%. That's more like it. But too little, too late. I decided to pay off her whole balance ($2,000 after the $100 statement credit and $300 monthly payment) over the next two months. I had enough of paying the high interest amounts. I'm done. After that's paid off I can finally divert that money into my emergency fund. 

Question: Do you spend time every month going over the bill or do you just pay part of the debt and hope it goes away real soon? 

I believe we should all spend a bit of time getting to know the true cost of credit. I wish I did. I would have paid it off in full last summer or when I had a chance last year.