I too would call. Remind them how long you've been a customer and you've always paid in full each month. Somehow the mail delivery wasn't in your favor this month. I'd be very surprised if they do not remove your fee. Please don't pay the late penalty until you've at least asked.

I had a notion to call but wasn't sure of my opinion, thanks for siding with me. Will call tomorrow.

call-they will remove the late fee.

That's a pretty hefty fee, glad you're going to call.

When you call, make sure they didn't ding your credit rating for the late payment.

I don't think you're allowing enough time. Mail it a few days earlier or pay electronically (if possible). There's nothing gained by trying to cut it so close.

Assuming you have your own internet access it makes much more sense to pay your bills online. Online payments are less vulnerable to identity theft. Snail mail is not only slow but often gets lost or stolen. Registering your accounts online allow any discrepancies to be brought to your attention much sooner. You can set up payment alerts, fraud alerts etc. plus many accounts now have handy year end statements available. Often online chat options are offered that allow you to resolve issues immediately right from your computer.

I don't want to pay bills online. I'll use snail mail as long as it's available.

Schoolhouse, there is no question about it, change of routine is hard, especially when it comes to our hard earned money. However, considering all of the risks involved and the unreliability of snail mail, online banking is really worth considering for your own protection.

I will never give a company direct access to our account on an automatic basis, however most all companies allow one to make monthly payments on their site with a credit card or the routing and account number from your bank. Another alternative is the bill pay feature offered by your bank. Then funds are withdrawn before they are sent electronically to the payee. A plus to that is that your balance is always in real time. Both of these alternatives are safe and reliable methods of payment. They're also easier to track once the bill has been paid. Having your bills sent to you via email is another way to keep hackers from gaining access to your personal information.

Unfortunately, because of all the photoshop programs, it is very easy now for a thief to steal your payment from the mail, duplicate your checks and steal the money from your account. And since there are less and less people using checks, I would think that your chances of risk might be even higher as a result. Lastly, if by chance your money should get stolen because of check fraud, getting your losses reimbursed from your bank may be much more difficult too simply because it's no longer a recommended method of payment for the general public.

My dh & I have had our account drained before and the experience was quite eye opening. I routinely check the account every couple of days. That Saturday was the day after payday so I was expecting to see a pretty comfortable balance and instead not only were we in the red, but our back up account was cleared out too! Some how they got my debit card information and duplicated it. Fortunately, to our Credit Unions credit, we were reimbursed very quickly, but if it had been done with checks, we very well may have been SOL. I would really hate for something like that to happen to you.

I generally used checks to pay bills up until a year or so ago. Sometimes, though I'd sent a check on time, I would get a late fee. I would call each and every time to have all fees, interest AND late fee, removed. I think at times the check would be held up in their system and believe me, they don't care. There's no one personally looking at your check and thinking, "I know this lady always pays on time so we won't put on a late charge." :) Yes, do call and insist they take off the charges.

Luk, it's the debit cards which can be so dangerous. When the bank combined my debit card with a credit card, I went in to cancel it; I don't use debit cards for retail and find them too open to fraud. Having one's cc stolen or lost is not a problem but having money taken from an account can be! You were fortunate to have your money returned by the bank.

Sjerin, thank you, I couldn't agree more about the debit cards and we learned a lesson that day!. Unlike before, our primary source of payment for everything now is a CC.

I actually had someone steal a check out of my mailbox that I was sending to a company that did not have an online payment feature. The payment was a pretty substantial one too. The person who stole it wasn't very bright but what they did was removed the name I had written in to To section and put a dummy name on the check and took a picture of the check with their cell phone and deposited it to a dummy account. They then did this again with another name and another account. All in all that very same check got deposited in to 4 different accounts via cell phone deposit. It took me weeks to get it all cleared up because it was a check and not a debit and checks do not have the same fraud protection that a debit card does.

I say the people weren't to bright because even though each account had a different name they all had one person in common as a signer on the account.

I totally understand how to pay bills online, I did so with Century Link for a couple years. Never a problem with change of routine, I just prefer to write checks until they no longer allow it. What about people who don't own a computer and have no desire to? I have one friend, my age, who refuses! Or the computer breaks down and is in the shop for a week or more?

The only issue I had with fraud was with my Visa card, and that was only when my bank switched to Visa from Mastercard. In all my years with MC, never had a problem.

I have a PayPal account set up with auto pay direct from my debit card, so far so good. Now that was one I debated about for a long time, but it was tiresome not keeping money in your PP account and finding an item that was more than your balance. You have to wait days for a bank transfer and it was embarrassing having to ask the seller to wait.

Oh, and I tried to call Elder-Beerman's customer service today and couldn't get through - it's Sunday. LOL!

Why do you prefer to write checks when other bill paying techniques are available that would seem to take less time and be more reliable?

I prefer to write checks.

Since your preferred method of paying your bills is by check, I'd just mail it a week sooner to give it plenty of time to get to it's destination. And, yes, call and ask them to remove the late fees. I've never had a company refuse to do this. It happens, they know it and they want to keep their good customers happy.

I am a check writer also. I don't have unlimited wifi and I can see at a glance just how much I have in my account without having to go online. Until I am made to do otherwise I think I will go with the checks, although they keep after me! :)

SchoolHouse, many folks have encouraged you to contact the customer service folks at Elder Beerman to ask that they waive the late fee. You indicated you will do that. I am of the opinion that, on this one, you need to "suck it up, buttercup."

You said that the payment was due on April 6th, and that you mailed it on April 1st. April 1st was a Thursday, and April 6th was a Tuesday. Some businesses consider Saturday to be a business day, others do not. I'm not aware of any business that considers Sunday to be a business day, even if they are open for business on Sundays. Giving Saturday the benefit of the doubt, that means you allowed only 5 days for the check to go through your post office, then be sent to and received by Elder Beerman, and then go through EB's processes to log the payment as having been received. Many, if not most, businesses advise their customers to allow at least 3 business days for payments to be posted to accounts after they have been received by the business. Businesses don't care when the payment is received at their physical location. They only care about when the payment is posted to your account -- which is why they advise to allow time for that. Tax collecting agencies (local, state, and federal) are the only entities that consider the postmark date to be of any value when payments are due.

Information that's missing from this equation includes (1) where do you live, (2) where is the address to which the EB payments are mailed, (3) what time during the day on April 1st did you mail the payment, (4) did you take the payment to the post office or did you leave it in the "outgoing mail" box in your neighborhood, (5) or did you put the payment in the "outgoing mail" box at your place of employment?????

You say you prefer to pay all of your bills by check. That's your prerogative. But if you are going to rely on the United States Postal Service to deliver those checks, you need to allow enough time for those payments to be received by and posted by the businesses to which you send them.

I'd be so nervous about paying my bills by checks sent in the mail! I used to, of course, but even way back then I was anxious about it.

Between weekends, holidays, weather problems, and other delivery/handling issues I'd be tempted to mail my payments two weeks before the due date.

I pay the majority of bills online, but still pay a few with checks for various reasons.

Dh recently returned to the work force after a year of retirement and gathering Social Security benefits. To pay that back (in order to qualify for a higher payout when he retires again in a couple years) we had to send a check to the SS office in Philadelphia. I wasn't thrilled about that. Sent it Priority with signature required. It sat in a PO Box for almost 2 weeks before being picked up. You would think an organization that pays benefits via automatic deposit would have a similar system setup for repayment.

I prefer to pay my bills by check as long as I am able. And my name isn't "Buttercup", Sunshine.

Called Cust.Service this morning. I was prepared to put up a fuss. All I said was I thought it unfair as I always pay on the 1st. of the month. Right away, the rep said, "The late fee will be taken off your account. Can I help you with anything else?"

Yay, schoolhouse. I'm glad it worked out. That seemed pretty steep penalty for a payment arriving a day or two late.

Nothing wrong with paying by check, but please don't put them in your mailbox with the flag up. Several years ago, I had a tenant whose adult son was stealing mail from neighborhood mailboxes. When she moved and I was cleaning up, under the building I found piles of his crap. Mixed in was a check written by a woman a few streets away, for some sort of subscription renewal. I took it to the police station, and they confirmed with her that she had put it in the outgoing mail. Unfortunately they told me that they couldn't do anything about him, because I didn't have the envelope to go with it. (They knew him for other reasons, and last I heard he was in jail.)

This was before fancy cell phones and depost-by-phone, so his options were limited. He could do much worse these days.

My mailman won't stop unless he sees a flag up, esp. if he hasn't got any mail to deliver. Just the way it's done here on our rural area, probably not the same everywhere.

I prefer to pay by check also, for various reasons. But I won't leave the outgoing bills in the mailbox--they all get sent at the Post Office. My mailbox is secure, and locked, for incoming mail.

I never leave outgoing mail in the box overnight. I think that is just inviting thieves. I put it in first thing in the morning, mailman comes at 11:30am., so I normally still here most days. My friend also goes to the Post Office to send her mail.

So much for "Never a problem with change of routine".

I have *never* had a problem paying bills by mailing checks. They are posted into a U.S.Mailbox, not set out in my home mailbox. I have had problems reversing a wrong charge that was paid automatically.

I don't get the point of debit cards. I use a CC for almost everything.

But...at this moment I am hesitating to use a CC for a 'Go fund me' that has been established to help a workman at our condo pay funeral expenses following the unexpected death of his wife. I presume this is safe as long as I see the 'lock' symbol?

For something like a Go fund me I would probably upload money onto a prepaid visa card that most stores carry. My Electric provider has the lock on their site also but that didn't stop someone from stealing from my account. My bank of course took care of it but they also warned me internet can only be so safe...if its on your computer its up for grabs if someone knows what their doing..and they do. I really don't see where online paying is safer than writing checks expecially after what happened to me, I'll stick to writing checks.

Go Fund Me is a legit site, there's nothing to worry about. There's no problem using a credit card there or with any other legitimate site.

Online payments are quicker and easier to make and have no in-transit time. Consumers have better protection with such payments than with payments by check. People who are uncomfortable or unable to deal with change can continue with old ways, they too aren't any better or worse, just less convenient and more potentially problematic (as this thread demonstrates).

Thanks, Elmer. I'll do the CC on the funding site.

I'm putting a toe in the water with our new condo ad on VRBO -- payments to go from the guest, through the VRBO account, direct deposit to my checking. Just had our first reservation, so we'll see! I hesitated to list because I don't like VRBO charging fees to our guests, but they are the biggest bully on the block for ads. I really liked the 'old way' of talking to guests by phone or online and getting some idea of how well they'd treat our property. That worked fine for 16 years. Not Fast Enough for today's 'Clickers'.