The traditional way to pay a credit card bill is to detach the “return this portion” of your statement that contains your name, address and account number, along with the address of the payment processing center.
You fill in the amount you’re paying and insert the portion, with your check or money order, in the envelope provided, making sure the center’s address shows through the window of the envelope. Affix a 42¢ stamp (44¢ after May 10) and mail, at least five days before the due date.
The further you are from the center, the more time it will usually take to get there. And vice versa. If you find out there’s a closer center than the one shown on your statement, ask the card company to list that one instead, to save a day or two of transit time.
In case you never noticed, there’s a series of five vertical lines to the left of where you stick the stamp. This indicates to the sorting machine at your local post office’s that there’s a barcode beneath the address, which the machine reads to speed up the processing. If you address a closed-face envelope instead of using the window envelope, this automation is lost and your mail may be delayed.
And that’s important, because if your payment is posted even a minute after the time noted on the back of your statement—e.g., 3 pm ET—on the due date, you’ll be hit with a late fee of $39 or so. Even if it arrived much earlier that day but a clerk didn’t get around to posting it until after the deadline.
Offshore Pro Group
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