It's a little known fact that late fees account for an IMMENSE proportion of credit card companies' profits, as much as 30% in the case of some lenders! You may never have encountered a 'late fee' before, but if you use a credit card, you probably will! Forget to pay off the bill one month, or misplace a bill, and the next month you will see a new entry on your statement - the dreaded 'Late Fee'. Credit cars companies make money in a number of ways, such as charging you interest on your balance, imposing fees on merchants, and so on. As competition in the credit card market has hotted up recently, card companies have started to shave down these 'reputable' costs charged to their 'good' customers, and to raise the charges against the 'bad' customers. The idea, of course is to keep their customer base up, by making the 'good' ones feel wanted, while hitting the 'bad' customers every which way they can.

What this means is that if you pay late, you are effectively subsidising those who either pay off their bills in full each month, or run away from their debts by filing for bankruptcy. Late fees vary from lender to lender, but typically start at around theten dollar mark, and go up over forty dollars. Interestingly, these fees are arbitrary, meaning the credit card corporations can charge whatever they think they can get away with, and have doubled on average in the last 5 years. And the revenue from this source soon ads up! Imagine half a million borrowers catching a median 17 dollar late fee! Thats... $8.5 million!!! No wonder the lenders like it so much!

All very interesting, I hear you say, but what can you do if you are staring down the barrel of a late fee and can't pay??! Use a skip payment service! For less than 70% of an average late fee, a skip payment service will handle the nastiness of the situation for you, and most importantly of all, there will be NO bad mark on your record, and NO credit reference listing that might impact your creditworthiness at a future date. The saving in cash terms may appear small, but believe you me, once you start acquiring bad credit listings, life becomes a LOT harder. Use skip agencies to avoid this at all costs! Where can you find a payment agency? Come on down to www.nodebtever.com !

About the Author
Alan Trent advises on bad debts at www.nodebtever.com the free site for sorting out debt problems.