The money that a person spends through their credit card is effectively money that the credit card company lends to them. Consequently, the credit card company expects timely payment of its ‘loan’ – through regular credit card balance repayments. Failure to make such payments on time automatically leads to some quite harsh penalties, which many people, perhaps out of procrastination or poor financial habits, find themselves suffering every so often. As it turns out, in fact, is that so great is the number of people suffering unfair credit card penalties that some credit card providers have come to view such penalties as one of their greatest revenue sources in the business.

Of course, while the credit card company enjoys the money it receives in the form of late credit card balance repayment penalty, the person on whom the penalty is charged has to live with the fact that the money they so pay is effectively money that they simply throw away, as they get absolutely nothing to show for it.

Now the basic concept of charging late credit card balance repayment penalties is understandable; because – to be fair to them – if the credit card companies didn’t charge such penalties, nobody would ever pay their credit card balance obligations on time. What is harder to sympathize with, though, is the situation where one is charged a late credit card balance repayment penalty, in spite of their having paid their credit card balance on time, a situation in which many credit card users actually find themselves in from time to time.

One good way, then, to avoid such unfair credit card penalties is by automating your payments. This is where you get into an arrangement with your bank for instance (especially if you run an online bank account), to be automatically crediting your credit card company’s account on the balance due date with the minimum credit card payment required to avoid a penalty – as a standing order, that is, even without your direct instruction. You can later, of course, make any additional credit card payments above the minimum, but after having avoided the misunderstandings that can cause an unfair credit card penalty first.

Making an effort to really understand your credit card company balance repayment guidelines (and following them to the letter) is another thing you can do to protect yourself from falling victim to unfair credit card balance repayment penalties. At the very least, ensure that you get the address to which you should send your credit card balance repayment check to clearly, and that you write the check legibly, to avoid a situation where the people employed to process the payment have difficulties doing so, leading to a situation where the penalty threshold date arrives while they are still struggling to process the payment.

If the possibility of making your credit card balance by phone is available to you, it is yet something else you might consider in avoiding late credit balance repayment penalties, because unlike the case of ‘a check in the mail’ there is very little opportunity for misunderstanding through this mode of credit card balance repayment, as the transaction is made and completed in real time.