Hey Dummy, I said to myself, if you’re going to be late once every fifty years on your credit card bill, why not put the sucker on autopay?
Actually, a lot of people addressed me in that fashion, but I still hear it in my voice. I didn’t pay the finance charge, which was considerable. On the advice of everyone in the whole world, I called the company and got it removed. I used my quavery voice and words like “Gracious” and “Tarnation” and “Dear.”
Still, autopay would have prevented all that. I have that bill and four other utilities that still come through the mail. I have resisted going paperless out of a sense of loyalty to the Postal Service. But I can’t save the Postal Service all by myself. I could when I was a letter carrier, and I did, but they’re on their own now. That’s why things went to hell after I retired.
So one day I sat down and plotted out my paperless future. All these bills have been coming for years with enticements for going paperless so I figured all I needed to do was express an interest and my wishes would be granted. I started with the credit card bill. Couldn’t figure it out right away, or possibly ever.
Shoot. Well there’s still the two electric companies, the internet, and the gas company. All of them required me to set up an online account, easy peasy. Not! One of them kept sending me in a loop where when I set up my username and password and hit Submit it started me over again. I gave that a half hour and gave up. Tearing up paper would be more satisfying than clicking off, by the way.
Second utility was way slicker. I got it all filled out in a snap and hit Register and the new screen had a pretty red banner at the top saying “We were unable to process your request. Please try again in a few minutes.” It must have been a very specific few minutes, because I got the same result five times over three days.
The third utility would not let me put in a password. I usually use the suggested passwords with all the letters and numbers and doodly keys but they wouldn’t take any of them. My email tipped the whole screen to the left with the weight of Reset Password messages but it was still no go.
The Internet bill seemed offended that I’d even contacted the site. I even put in my account number but they wouldn’t get me any further than that. I had a little chat with the robot in the chat box and discovered they had my old email address. Which I could have fixed myself, if I had an account set up, but I didn’t. So I had them fix that, and then it was just a matter of filling out the rest. Three or four stabs at a password before I hit the sweet spot, but then all was complete, and I hit the submit button, and there, bright and shiny, was a new screen that said “HI, GINGER!”
Ginger?
My thirty-two character random password with the upper and lower case letters and numbers and symbols, none of which could be repeated three times, got me Ginger? I investigated.
Sure enough, now I know Ginger, and her home address, and the fact that she owes the company $103.50, which is twice what I owe them.
I don’t know why I need such a secure password if they’re just going to give me someone else’s pertinent details. She’s on autopay so I can probably access her bank account numbers, but I’m not evil enough to know how to benefit from it.
The credit card was the most baffling. I’ve got that online account set up already and they seem to recognize me when I come calling. But nowhere on the site did I see how to set up autopay. So I hit the search bar. “How do I set up automatic payments?” I asked politely. They popped right back.
“You can set up automatic payments through your online credit card account.”
How?
“You can set up automatic payments through your online credit card account.”
Says you! I did figure out how to add an external account but I don’t know if it’s merely associated with my credit card, like they’re pals, or if there’s going to be some communication between them. I dug a little deeper.
Twenty-five full minutes later—and I swear, I’ve been around this internet more than once or twice—I finally set up autopay. It was buried ten deep in drop-down menus. The Autopay option was the second cousin eight times removed of the home page.
Damn. I should’ve given them Ginger’s account number.
Artificial Malevolence! The next time I deal with a bot “assisstant” I think I’ll keep track of my blood pressure.
It’s all kind of worth it though to see HI GINGER! show up on the screen.
I feel your pain! Had similar issues with ATT which we dropped two years ago after learning they were major contributors to right-wing sites. ATT continued to bill us for nonexistent telephone service. When I tried to correct by calling their ‘Customer Service’ line, they suggest correcting this online, which is impossible since I don’t have a valid account for which nonetheless you continue to send payment notices…
oy oy oy oy oy oy oy oy
I love the saying “to err is human… but to REALLY fuck things up, you need a computer!” Some websites are so difficult and time-consuming to navigate that I call their 800 number to place an order. (1 800 CONTACTS… I’m lookin’ at you.) I tried to buy something on the Walmart website, but I gave up after a while and just ordered it on Amazon (which I try to avoid using. But it was quicker, easier, and cheaper.)
Paul does banking online, but I don’t trust it. I still write out checks and either mail them or, in the case of paying my credit card bill, I take it to the actual bank, which is just down the street.
Paul had a credit card which someone managed to hack and buy things. He got it straightened out with an actual human. They sent another card… and it was hacked again, before he even managed to use it. Once again, they sent him a new card… and it was hacked BEFORE it even got to him in the mail! He canceled the entire account, as this was obviously some sort of inside job. Still, they sent him bills repeatedly, and he’d have to call them yet again. Finally, it has been resolved.
Sometimes “convenience” is pretty bloody inconvenient! Or possibly, we THINK the convenience is meant on our end. But it’s not. It’s totally THEIR convenience.
I’m actually a big fan of banking online. I just deposited a check with my phone without moving my glutes from my recliner. I like that a whole lot. I do remember when banking took a significant chunk out of your days. I got paid once every two weeks and had to use up an entire day’s lunch break to deposit my paycheck.
All my bill paying is done through auto pay, but through painful experience, I have found it should be done through the bank account, not debit card (which is the rest of my financial world. What is this funny green paper?). I thought since it deducts immediately from the bank account it would be OK. Nope. It has been hacked twice, meaning I’ve had to get a new one and give the new number to ALL those businesses; and always forget one. They’re now all on the bank account. Just my luck, the bank will fail.
Okay, yeah. That’s what Paul does. Goes through the bank account, and then you don’t have to go through all these other accounts to pay it. I still don’t trust doing it via computer, though. The more businesses that have all your info, the more problems you have if you DO get hacked.
It’s all true, but I’m a whore for convenience like everyone else. Except you guys.
I do NOT LIKE autopay anything. I like to spend my own money by writing out little legal documents in the form of checks, signed with my actual signature. If I make a math mistake in my check register, that’s on me. If some ‘auto-pay’ hoodlum makes a mistake, it’s still on me, and I’ll have to hunt some real someone to talk to about it. So much easier just to write a check, proverbially lick a stamp, and let the Post office be the fall guy if my bill doesn’t get to its destination on time.
YEAH! It’s so much simpler to get more checks, envelopes, stamps than it is to set up these accounts. I’ve had mail misdelivered, but they seem to understand, as they look at my previous data and see that I am ALWAYS on time. I get a pass, as I should, because I DO always pay upon receipt.
Letting the post office be the fall guy always used to bug me but that was before the USPS went straight to hell on a sled greased by Trump’s Postmaster General.
Way before the internets, there was network TV, featuring all sorts of offerings. In the days just before, after or when America was great, there was an unspoken weekly battle – Ginger or Mary Ann? Getting off the island also concerned some. That was a time when the post office ruled!
I do know the Professor kind of let himself go. Although I think at this point he’s also…gone.
My nemesis is the portals that health-care professional s set up to make me so very angry.
They send an e-mail to say they have sent a test result or notes or what ever, just check the portal. Aaarrrgh.
They used to send a letter or someone would call.
I recently was told my mama gram results were available in the portal.
Nevermind.
I am a big fan of my HMO if that’s what it is–Kaiser Permanente. Those people really seem to know what they’re doing, including in communications, which are slick and easy.
I went paperless for gas and electric bills years ago and don’t remember exactly how but it was super easy and now I get my bills via email and pay via my online banking, though I did start paying extra on those accounts because I can and when the bills come into my email they say “your account is in credit, no payment required”. My internet is a direct debit from that same bank account I think that is the same as autopay?
I don’t have credit card bills because I never buy anything on credit.
I still can’t believe my money is shooting through the ether somehow.
Once upon a time we heard about how often things were stolen from mailboxes, so we switched to a PO Box. USPS fucked the forwarding up so badly — mail addressed to our street address would arrive in our town’s PO, and to get it to our PO box they would first route it to the dispatching center two counties to the south, then back to us, and by that time a month had passed — that we decided that autopay was the only way to keep from destroying our credit rating. Speaking of which, a friend once worked in Brazil for whoever was responsible for setting up a credit-reporting agency there (I won’t mention which). I told her “Some day, because of what your employer is doing, Brazilians will be sitting at their kitchen tables with their heads in their hands, moaning ‘WHO GAVE ANYONE THE RIGHT TO DO THIS TO US?!?’ ” She doesn’t work for him any more, though I don’t think I was the reason. [End of free-association excursion.]
We’ll need a password to be put in our own grave. Hopefully, it may be Ginger who goes first.