While I believe that credit cards a great tool if used correctly I must admit that I almost got in trouble with a sneaky credit card trick. I pay all of my credit cards automatically via ING so that I do not have to deal with the hassle of writing checks.

I have a system to pay my credit cards where the two cards I use on a regular basis (to earn cash back) get paid four times a month based on my budget for what is put on that card. I have an idea of what I put on each card and divide that by four and ING sends that one fourth payment every week to the card. The amount is more than the minimum payment would be and since I am paying multiple times I do not even have to worry about the due date.

Luckily the due dates for both cards are about the same time so that makes it easy to manage them. I then check the balance on the cards during the last week of the month and pay any outstanding amounts so that on the last day of the month the card is fully paid off. The due dates are around the 10th to the 14th for both cards so I have about two weeks of zero balance on the card before the dance begins again.

creditcard.jpgAs a result of this I have no idea what the payment addresses on my cards are supposed to be and this is where the fun starts. I have one card that changed the payment address without giving me notification. Now I suppose it is their right to change the address but think of the ramifications of an address change. Depending on where the new address is this means my payment would now have to be routed to the new address over a number of days.

If I used to pay the bill close to the due date then this could possibly make my payment go in late and cause me to have a late fee on the account.  Sneaky sneaky.

I just got a feeling when I opened the statement that I needed to check the address and saw that it was different from what I had saved in ING. I looked on the website to make sure and then had to go into ING to make the changes.

* Delete all 4 weekly payments

*Delete account name

*Enter account with new address

* Add  in 4 new weekly payments

ING does not let you simply change the information on a mailing address that they have confirmed so that is why I had to go through all those steps. I am glad that I caught the address change and now my payments will go directly to the place they need to be and avoid spending extra days floating around.

Do you check the mailing addresses on your credit cards often?