Snail-mail for you, baby!

The other night (Saturday, January 16, 2010) I set about paying a University of Rochester Medical Center bill online.
Great idea; pay your bill online, just like ordering something.
Ain’t technology wonderful?
No stamp, no check to fill out; and I’ve done it before.
And best of all, I initiate it; not some automatic charge to my account, that can go bonkers and steal me blind.
That happened to a friend of mine.
She had set up a monthly auto-charge to pay off her college loan, and it started charging her checking account multiple times per month.
It overdrew her account, so the bank started merrily charging overdraft fees, and bouncing checks.
I remember her angrily parrying some service-representative in Sri Lanka who could hardly speak English.
Trying to straighten things out.
So I cranked the bill-pay web address into my FireFox Internet browser, and there’s the bill-pay page on my screen.
I dutifully began filling it in: patient name, account number, street address, phone, e-mail, credit-card number.
“Submit.”
NOTHING!
Minutes pass.
“Click ‘submit’ only once.”
Start over.
Back to blank bill-pay page.
Everything is auto-filling, since I already did it once.
I’m suspicious of that; some sites don’t like auto-fill.
“Submit.”
“You’ve committed an error. Please verify all red-starred entries are filled, and filled correctly.”
Well, they are; but no auto-fill this time.
“Submit.”
“You’ve committed an error. Please verify all red-starred entries are filled, and filled correctly.”
“I GIVE UP!” I shout, throwing up my hands. “Snail-mail for you, baby!”
I cut a check to University of Rochester Medical Center, and put a stamp on the envelope.
We’ll drop it in the drop-box at the Bloomfield post-office the next day.
Thinking about this, I didn’t try Internet-Explorer.
I get that sometimes.
Some sites only work with Internet-Explorer.
They don’t work with FireFox.
And that’s despite FireFox being superior — or so it seems.
This Blog-Spot site doesn’t work with Internet-Explorer.

• Both “FireFox” and “Internet-Explorer” are Internet computer web-browsers; Internet-Explorer the Microsoft version thereof. Internet-Explorer is more common.
• “Bloomfield” is the nearest village to the east, about four miles away. It’s within the rural town of East Bloomfield. The village of “Holcomb,” to the northeast, seceded from Bloomfield long ago, but recently merged back into Bloomfield village. Both Holcomb and Bloomfield village were within the town of East Bloomfield. The post-office was within Holcomb. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester. Bloomfield village is a roundabout way to Boughton (“BOW-tin” as in “wow”) Park, where I run and we walk our dog. Mailing from there is safer than my mailbox.