Online bill pay doesn’t always work. Last week, I made an attempt to pay for the rental of my cable box online. I had paid online previously and thought that this would be something easy to do. Unfortunately, the cable company would not accept the payment from my account. It wasn’t my account, because other bills that I paid from the same account for larger amounts, the same day were accepted. I tried another time and my attempted payment was rejected as well.

The lesson that I learned from this is even when making payments online attempt to make them early enough so that even if you need to mail in a check or try another day, you still have time and won’t incur late charges. Since I had to send a check, I sent enough to cover several months payments, to make it worth the cost of a stamp. To pay by credit card via telephone I would have to pay a “convenience charge” which was about half the amount of the monthly rental fee.

Online payments are supposed to make your life easier but when making payments for small amounts (under $10) online payments are not always the easiest to make.