Say what?

Friday, February 11, 2011

This morning, I realized we haven't gotten a bill for Mr. A's truck since late November. Cue panic. We have always paid way extra, so when I just called the number on the last bill we got, the digital lady told me our next payment is due in July 2011. Whew. But still.

So of course after trying all kinds of mouth aerobics trying to say the phrases in the way the digital lady will understand, I finally squeak out a version of "operator" that she understands.

The operator tells me that they have been having a billing system upgrade issues since December, and that pretty much none of their customers have been getting their bills.

WHAT?

Ha! How can this be possible?! Are you telling me that you expect normal, busy, pulled in a thousand directions, adult Americans to realize on their own that they didn't get a bill and so they should pay it anyway?!

Am I just unorganized and scatterbrained that I didn't realize until today this bill was missing for 2 months?

I don't know if the online billing has been working- she seemed to indicate that the entire billing system is messed up- but we don't do online billing anyway. Mr. A doesn't like to give digital access to our bank account to billers- he read somewhere that even if you can't pay your bill, they will continue to take money out of your account and that they could technically take money out whenever they want to. It's not like we don't have enough money. He just likes us to write the actual checks :)

I feel bad for the people who aren't ahead on their payments. Does this ding their credit if they haven't paid in two months? Sheesh. That would suck.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

My student loan people had the same problem a few months ago...except I was getting phone calls saying I hadn't paid and my account was going into default! So, when I called them up, in a panic, they told me that their billing system was messed up and all of their customers were getting those phone calls. It was not cool!

... said...

Yep, that stinks. I learned 8 years ago with a cell phone bill that never came. (It doesn’t take much for me to learn my lesson.) You are responsible whether you receive the bill or not. Now, I have a list of monthly bills and I sit down twice a month and just pay, whether I have the bill in hand or not.

Your husband is right, but only when you give them permission to do *automatic* withdrawals. You can still pay online through your bank, but the payment doesn’t go through until you authorize it and you have to authorize it each and very month.

Johanna said...

That has happened with our phone bill. We still had to pay the late fee. Ugh! Now we're more on top of things. lol

Coco said...

Lame! How can you run a business like that? I'm with you. I would NEVER notice a bill that wasn't there. And I loathe those computerized phone lines. Grrrr. Please let me speak to a real person, preferrably not one half way across the world, who can actually understand me and help.

Leah said...

This happened to me with a student loan payment. They just didn't send it to me for a couple of months, and I DIDN'T realize. The way we do our bills is you send me a bill. . . I pay it! No bill. . . out of sight, out of mind! Luckly you were ahead. :)

Lindsey Dueck said...

Hahaha, "mouth aerobics" made me lol. I hate when you can't talk to a real person!

When I had a Nintendo DS, I used to play Rock, Paper, Scissors and you had to quicky say either one of those, and it would NEVER recognise me saying scissors no matter how many ways I would say it!

Lindsey Dueck said...

OH! And you have some awards waiting for you on my blog if you want them!

Anonymous said...

Ugh that is annoying and scary. I had something similar happen when we moved. I told the company we were moving and our address, but they didn't change it. We missed a few bills until we got one that was forwarded to our new address. No fun.