Retail Store Bills
Problems Paying Off Your Retail Store Credit Card Bills?
In times of economic stress, it's easy to decide not to pay bills you might consider frivolous, like retail store cards. But ignoring any bill is not a good solution. Your financial crisis may be temporary, but you can do long-term damage to your credit background, a situation that can actually prevent you from getting a new job if you've been laid off, or from re-establishing yourself once you have a new job. So no matter how unimportant the bill, the bigger picture is important. We here at icantpaymybill.com will gather information on individual retail store credit for you, including how much interest they charge and what the typical fees are. To balance a weak budget, it's crucial to know just how much you're really paying.
Retail store credit cards can be quite expensive to keep up. Fees and interest rates are often at the top of the scale and represent the highest charges allowed by law. The first thing you should consider if you're hit by a financial crisis is paying the card off and canceling it. If the balance is too high to pay off, but you can transfer it to a lower interest card or consolidation loan, consider doing that. If consolidation for lower interest rate is not an option, call the lending company (not the store itself) and ask them what they can do to help. They may already have an authorized plan in place for lower monthly payments, reduced interest rates, fee waivers, or other strategies that will help you make payments and maintain your credit rating. The key strategy when dealing with any creditor is communication. Dodging calls and tossing out unopened bills is often more stressful in the long run that talking to customer service.
The thing to remember is that if you're in trouble, so are they. The bottom line of a retail store credit operation depends on your payments. That is good news for you, because it means that they need to work something out as much as you need them to. You're better off dealing with customer service before you miss payments than collections afterward. To the collections department, you are already delinquent. To customer service, you're a valued customer making a proactive arrangement.
Have you been in this situation before? We'd love to know how you worked it out, if a retail store creditor was willing to work with you – or not – and what happened as a result of your efforts. Please share your experiences, and if you'd like to get the skinny on a retail store not listed at icantpaymybill.com, let us know. We'll make every effort to run down the information so you can make that call fully armed with knowledge and confidence.