Step one: pay your bills on time.

Step two: lather, rinse, repeat.

However, if for some strange reason you do get a payment sent in late just try to be calm and call the company. That is what I did. I have my payments all set up in Electric Orange to go out automatically every month. Well I think I must have tweaked some of the dates too much and did not remember because when I downloaded my statement into Money I noticed a charge for $35.00 that said Late Payment Fee.

What?

I could not believe that I had a late payment because I just KNOW that I had the payments set to go out before the due date. I took a deep breath and said the payment was one day late and I have never been late paying this card. I decided to take a chance and call up the credit card company and ask for the fees to be reversed.

I spoke to the rep who put me on hold for a few minutes while he pulled my payment history. Imagine my relief when I was told that I did have a good payment history and that the payment could be reversed because it was only one day late. I was very happy and after I got off the phone I immediately went into Electric Orange and moved the ‘send payment’ date to five days earlier to take account of what just happened.

Who wouldn’t want their own credit card machine Being able to accept credit cards for your business and all different forms of payment is great and all merchant accounts are great with credit.