What to Do If Your Credit Card Bill Payment is Due Today?
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Yesterday, my father woke me in a hurry saying:
“I just remembered my credit card bill payment is due today. What should I do?”
He doesn’t understand English. He is computer illiterate. He hasn’t used an ATM in the 23 years he’s been in the U.S.
What he does know is to review the transactions and how to sent the check in for payment.
In this day in age, it is relatively easy to make any bill payment in seconds with the help of the Internet. Where the predominant excuse is “I don’t have money”, my father just doesn’t know how. He has always been on time with his credit card payments but this time, it just happened to slip by him.
The Options
In the event that a credit card bill payment was due today, our instincts would be to jump on a computer and pay it online. The transaction goes through immediately and the worries are gone.
No late payment fee. No APR hike.
But, it is also great to know your other options when some things don’t go as planned:
- Paying online is the way to go. Online banking was a great invention. Simply link your checking account to the credit card account and you can pay your balance with a few clicks. Not to mention that most smartphones make this process a total breeze as well.
- Make a payment over the phone. Almost everyone has a phone these days but we tend to forget the things we can do with a simple phone call because we’ve been spoiled by easy access to the Internet. But, we can make credit card payments over the phone.
- Ask to have the due date extended. If you’ve been a responsible customer with a good payment history, the credit card company may be lenient enough to push back your due date so that you have time to send in a check.
- Walk into the bank with the check and bill payment slip. In the rare occasion that none of the previous three methods will work, taking a trip to the bank is the last resort. This applies to cardholders whose cards are issued by financial institutions with a brick-and-mortar branch. Bring the payment slip and a check and the payment is processed on the spot.
Easy as Pie
My father did not register his accounts online and he doesn’t really trust having his personal information on the internet. I would have signed up his accounts or called in to get things done but he preferred option #4. He’s the type that is accustomed to the old-school style of banking – with a teller.
So, I searched up a nearby location and went with him to drop off the payment so that he’ll know what to do the next time something like this happens again.
He was a little frantic as most people would be but it is not a big problem as long as you don’t remember that you didn’t pay your credit card bill 5 minutes before 5:00PM.
(Photo credit: RambergMediaImages)
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