Well, how many of those late fees are due to sidelined mail.
I sent a payment to a creditor. It had 10 days to get there from the day after I dropped it in the box. We had two blizzards that month. The workers at the regional sorting center could not get to work for five days that month, and apparently, the backlog got shoved off in a corner. I was notified by the creditor that my payment was late. I made a payment (by phone) and stopped the payment on the check I had mailed. My next (monthly) payment went through normally. Then I got notification from the creditor that another payment had been refused, (the stopped payment check), and got tagged with a refused payment fee, two weeks after the next month's payment had gone through.
Apparently the folks at the USPS sorting center, instead of placing a priority on the backlogged mail, shoved it aside and picked at the pile in their spare time. (There were actually two payments involved, to different creditors, and all told, and a that point, it cost me over $120 to trust the postal service.)
When I explained the situation to the creditor, they relieved me of the charges that made up their end of the mess, keeping a loyal customer.
But I have to wonder how many people whose credit score was not above 800 were similarly screwed up, biting a chunk out of their budget (and maybe even hurting their credit) because of that foul up.
