How to get out of credit card late fees…and save yourself some money
June 14th, 2007 by LuLuGal
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 an all different forms of payment is great and all merchant accounts are great with credit.
Popularity: 28% [?]
Posted in Credit Cards, Daily life, Finances, Save Money |
June 16th, 2007 at 1:21 am
i’m so glad it worked out for you. apparently ccard companies make most of their money off late payments? geez, that’s a rip!
June 16th, 2007 at 1:55 am
That just tells me to be more careful when I am setting up my automatic payments.
June 16th, 2007 at 9:49 am
hmmph…
Careless if you ask me. When you schedule your first automatic payment you always need to monitor it and be ready to back it up.
Double/Triple check your dates. It’s one thing to get a late penalty because you don’t have the money, it’s another if you forget, but to THINK it’s being paid is just careless.
June 16th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Baz, maybe you misunderstood. This was not my FIRST payment on the card. I had the autopay set up long before and the check always got cashed long before the due date. I was continually moving the date up to see how long I could keep the money in the electric orange account to pay as close as possible to the due date. The last time I tweaked is when the payment went through one day late.