Bill-pay follies
—For some time Yrs Trly has been using online bill-pay. Gas, electric, cellphone, Internet, water; all online.
But not the online bill-pay of the provider.
I don’t trust it. I’ve heard horror stories.
I use my bank’s online bill-pay service. That is, I set up the bill-pay.
The bank then transfers money electronically to the payee.
NO WAY is that provider charging my bank-account. The one who authorized a bill-pay is ME, not the provider.
I suppose I could “tell” my provider to charge my account — that’s “authorizing” them.
I lobbed the bank into the mix. Just one more way of keeping that payee from going bonkers. (Horror stories.)
I use the bank’s bill-pay to pay my credit-card. No auto bill-pay for this kid!
My credit-card statement arrived the other day — I still do paper.
The other night I would set up my bank to pay my credit-card bill.
Various hairballs have been encountered, one being I can no longer do it from this laptop. Both my laptop browsers, Firefox 78.0.2 and Safari 13.1.1, won’t open my bank’s bill-pay.
But my iPhone will. So I been setting up bill-pays with my iPhone. Logging into my bank is by facial recognition = nice.
Recently my bank “upgraded” its online banking — for which reason my two browsers no longer work.
My bank suggests I switch to Google Chrome®. No Dark-Side for this kid! And they ain’t drivin’ my car either!
So, set up paying my credit-card bill through my iPhone.
Perhaps the old geezer was befuddled, but things seem to have changed.
Hoops galore! So far at least an hour has gone past trying to pay this credit-card bill. This is progress?
After a lotta horsing around, it looked like I had set up my credit-card bill-pay. But I wasn’t sure; and I couldn’t see a way of being sure.
Plus it looked like the bill-pay was set up for the next day, which would bounce.
All kinds of insanity was being hurled at me, which no doubt a millennial could make sense of.
I know, I was born in the wrong century.
I could imagine someone my age throwing up his hands and telling his daughter “just go to the bank and pay the bill!”
Same thing with everything else: “write a check and mail it.”
Us geezers are wrong century = do it “old-school.”
Apparently I successfully set up my second bill-pay, but I wasn’t sure of that either.
So call my bank, but it’s 7:30 p.m., so of course the bank is closed.
And when you call the bank, you get a machine that gives you an option for every key on your phone; and there are 12 keys.
That machine rattled-on at least 10 minutes. I tried the “O” key, and got nothing.
Back to the speech. That machine was gonna finish wasting 10 minutes no matter what.
(Give the dude a mic, and he won’t shaddup!)
Maybe this is how millennials spend their time = listening to a long speech, or the “Boom-Chicka Boom-Chicka Boom-Chicka” generated by “please hold.” “We value your call. Your wait-time will be 36 hours. Please continue holding.”
I learned to do something else, or eat or something, during a “please hold.” (I saw a manager do that at the Mighty-Mezz.)
So, go to bed. Call the bank the next morning.
Indeed I had set up two payments to my credit-card bill, one for the very next day which woulda bounced.
I asked the girl — a rare bird, since she could speak fluent English, and was able to make sense of her computer screen — to delete my next day payment, yet allow my correct payment to continue.
I then asked her if she could set up my gas bill-pay, since I had no idea what would happen if I tried to do that; and I didn’t wanna hafta call ‘em back.
Follies parried! At least two hours wasted trying to online pay that bill.
Online bill-pay saves postage, check writing, and driving all over creation. Five dollars worth of gas just to pay a bill.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost 15 years ago. BEST job I ever had. I was employed there almost 10 years — over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern. (I had a heart-defect caused stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well. That defect was repaired.)
But not the online bill-pay of the provider.
I don’t trust it. I’ve heard horror stories.
I use my bank’s online bill-pay service. That is, I set up the bill-pay.
The bank then transfers money electronically to the payee.
NO WAY is that provider charging my bank-account. The one who authorized a bill-pay is ME, not the provider.
I suppose I could “tell” my provider to charge my account — that’s “authorizing” them.
I lobbed the bank into the mix. Just one more way of keeping that payee from going bonkers. (Horror stories.)
I use the bank’s bill-pay to pay my credit-card. No auto bill-pay for this kid!
My credit-card statement arrived the other day — I still do paper.
The other night I would set up my bank to pay my credit-card bill.
Various hairballs have been encountered, one being I can no longer do it from this laptop. Both my laptop browsers, Firefox 78.0.2 and Safari 13.1.1, won’t open my bank’s bill-pay.
But my iPhone will. So I been setting up bill-pays with my iPhone. Logging into my bank is by facial recognition = nice.
Recently my bank “upgraded” its online banking — for which reason my two browsers no longer work.
My bank suggests I switch to Google Chrome®. No Dark-Side for this kid! And they ain’t drivin’ my car either!
So, set up paying my credit-card bill through my iPhone.
Perhaps the old geezer was befuddled, but things seem to have changed.
Hoops galore! So far at least an hour has gone past trying to pay this credit-card bill. This is progress?
After a lotta horsing around, it looked like I had set up my credit-card bill-pay. But I wasn’t sure; and I couldn’t see a way of being sure.
Plus it looked like the bill-pay was set up for the next day, which would bounce.
All kinds of insanity was being hurled at me, which no doubt a millennial could make sense of.
I know, I was born in the wrong century.
I could imagine someone my age throwing up his hands and telling his daughter “just go to the bank and pay the bill!”
Same thing with everything else: “write a check and mail it.”
Us geezers are wrong century = do it “old-school.”
Apparently I successfully set up my second bill-pay, but I wasn’t sure of that either.
So call my bank, but it’s 7:30 p.m., so of course the bank is closed.
And when you call the bank, you get a machine that gives you an option for every key on your phone; and there are 12 keys.
That machine rattled-on at least 10 minutes. I tried the “O” key, and got nothing.
Back to the speech. That machine was gonna finish wasting 10 minutes no matter what.
(Give the dude a mic, and he won’t shaddup!)
Maybe this is how millennials spend their time = listening to a long speech, or the “Boom-Chicka Boom-Chicka Boom-Chicka” generated by “please hold.” “We value your call. Your wait-time will be 36 hours. Please continue holding.”
I learned to do something else, or eat or something, during a “please hold.” (I saw a manager do that at the Mighty-Mezz.)
So, go to bed. Call the bank the next morning.
Indeed I had set up two payments to my credit-card bill, one for the very next day which woulda bounced.
I asked the girl — a rare bird, since she could speak fluent English, and was able to make sense of her computer screen — to delete my next day payment, yet allow my correct payment to continue.
I then asked her if she could set up my gas bill-pay, since I had no idea what would happen if I tried to do that; and I didn’t wanna hafta call ‘em back.
Follies parried! At least two hours wasted trying to online pay that bill.
Online bill-pay saves postage, check writing, and driving all over creation. Five dollars worth of gas just to pay a bill.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost 15 years ago. BEST job I ever had. I was employed there almost 10 years — over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern. (I had a heart-defect caused stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well. That defect was repaired.)
posted by BobbaLew at 12:23 PM
1 Comments:
Be careful what you say about Chrome otherwise it may be determined that a visit to Room 101 (inside the Ministry of Love) is the best course for your stubborn resistance.
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