Shelley‘s baby while she and M went out to paint the town. The baby was five months old and a boy (it’s a boy, Shelley!), but very advanced for his age. He was potty trained and could walk quite well, and while he couldn’t talk, he could make it clear what he wanted.
The child would NOT stop shoving Beanie Babies in his mouth. Every time I turned around I had to pull one out of his mouth, and I couldn’t figure where the hell he was getting them. I’d pull one out, and he’d give me a big toothy grin, then ten seconds later there was a Beanie leg or tail sticking out of his mouth.
As you can imagine, it was quite frustrating. I sure hope Shelley keeps the Beanie Babies away from her baby, that’s all I’ll say.
* * *
So, one of the things I hate about paying bills is the whole writing out the checks, then trusting my mailman to not lose my mail, and waiting for the checks to clear. My credit union offers a Billpay option, wherein you basically electronically transfer the money, it’s immediately taken out of your checking account, and it gets there faster than the mail would. I’m seriously considering using Billpay to pay the majority of our bills (excepting, of course, our mortgage, because I just KNOW that it would turn into a huge fuckarow because Ch@se Manhatt@n sucks ass).
Here’s where you come in – in the comments, tell me the horror stories about your friend’s friend’s cousin’s uncle who used the Billpay option at their bank and they took out $10,000 instead of $1,000. If there are horror stories to be told about paying bills electronically, I know y’all will have them. I have faith in you!
* * *
Which reminds me – thanks for all the sad song suggestions in Friday’s comments. I read some of them and thought “I can’t believe I forgot that song!”, and there are a bunch I want to listen to, which I think I’m going to start doing this week.
Y’all rock.
* * *
It appears, though I haven’t gotten any email telling me so, that I’m up for a few Diarist Awards. A couple of
entry awards, and a
site award.
Thank you to whoever nominated me (the person who nominated me for Best Journal (Overall), what exactly were you on?), and if you have a journal go vote whether you vote for me or not!
Fred’s up for Best Account of a Public or News Event for
this entry, and
Jane‘s up for Best Writing. You should DEFINITELY go vote for them. Go on, now. Scoot!
* * *
I so cannot believe Jennifer Lopez married whatshisname. What the hell is up with that? I mean, DAMN. She was in Forever Love with Ben “The Head” Affleck just a few months ago. That is one screwed-up woman. I mean, I’d love to be proven wrong here, but I suspect this marriage won’t last a year. She has some weird deep-seated need to be married, and she’s going to spend her life moving from man to man, marrying them during the first months of their relationship, and dumping them when real-life hits and she realizes “This isn’t champagne and roses!”
Speaking of celebrity marriages, I’ll now lift my 18-month prediction on Julia Roberts and
Matthew Modine Michael Madsen what the fuck is his name again? Danny Moder, especially since July 4th will be two years. Heh. Also, you can’t have that “They’re about to break up annnnnnny minute now” bad karma out there when kids are involved.
I’m surprised that she didn’t wait until she was past three months to make the announcement. Maybe they were afraid that the news would leak and wanted to pre-empt that? Anyway. Consider that prediction nullified and in it’s place a wish for a long, happy marriage, mm’kay?
* * *
What? You’ve never seen a cat sitting in a box before?
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I have had wonderful luck paying my bills electronically. Sure beats writing cheques and mailing them!
I’ve had nothing but good experiences with paying my bills online. Especially if you’ve forgotten about one and need to pay it that day (hehe..that NEVER happens to me…riiightt).
But, I honestly pay most of mine on the web site of whoever I owe. I think it’s more immediate that way… and i know it’s not floating somewhere i’m cyberspace… they also usually give a conf # which is somewhat of a comfort…
good luck with it.
I love my electronic bill pay! I never need stamps! I love it so much that I’m trying to convince my boss to let me pay company bills this way. The only way there can really be a huge mistake like the one you mentioned is if you type the number in wrong. I personally wouldn’t have a $10,000 screw up because I never have that much cash available at one time…but…if it makes you nervous you could open a “bill paying” account that’s separate from your main account and transfer funds to it on a monthly basis. You can do that electonically too!
I don’t use a billpay option but I gave almost all of my bill people the information to pull the bill amount out of my bank every month. I haven’t ever had a problem. Let me see, I think it’s mortgage, electric, gas, satellite and regular phone. The only ones I don’t have come out of the account is my credit card (Ch@se) and water (City of Houston) who I DO NOT trust. I have the newspaper, cell phone and cable internet put on my credit card every month. If I had to do it again, I’d put everything on the credit card. That way I’d still only have to write one check and I’d get airline miles at the same time! In any case, I’ve never had a problem and it makes my life A LOT easier. Thumbs up from me!
I pay every bill I have through my bank billpay option. It is the best thing I ever did and never have had a problem.
We’ve been paying bills electronically our whole marriage (10 years). Because he travels so much for work, my husband was actually paying bills electronically for years before we even met. No problems. I actually think most places (read public utilities, banks, credit lenders, etc.) prefer that you do it this may.
I’ve paid all of my bills electronically for a long time (I don’t use BillPay with the bank, though) & have never had one bad experience. It sure beats buying money orders & stamps & having to remember to mail them.
I have a ch@se mortgage and I pay it through their website’s electronic billpay option every month, never had a problem at all.
Been paying bills through my bank (B@nk of @meric@) for coming up on a year now and it the BEST. THING. EVER!
Never need stamps, you can pay to people (like Doctors, friends, etc.) who don’t take electronic payments. Wonderful, wonderful stuff…
I’ve been using the Billpay thing at my credit union for like three years, and I LOVE it. It makes it so much easier to budget on a PC screen than with pencil in paper.
The only, and I mean only, problem I’ve had has been with Time Warner Cable (who sucks ass, like C.M. I guess) because getting my payments through the Billpay service apparently fractured their fragile little minds. The problems were on the TW end, not the credit union.
You should give it a try with a couple of bills first, then once you start to love it, and you will, toss in the rest.
Electronic bill pay is the shits. Paco uses it exclusively. I don’t know the last time we mailed a bill. Well, I wouldn’t know anyway, since I don’t handle the money, but you know what I mean.
How do you think the bank pays the electric bill after you’ve mailed the check? They don’t carry the money over to the Electric Company, in one of their Money Delivery Trucks. All the money is electronically transferred from the bank’s account to the electric company’s bank account. All you are eliminating by doing in online yourself, is the paper check, envelope and 37 cent stamp.
I had an error made just once…to my newspaper. But I always print out the confirmation information after paying the bill, so I notified the bill pay company and they took care of everything immediately. They notified the newspaper that the error was theirs…not mine and everything was taken care of.
No horror stories here…I work for a credit union and using billpayer is Godsend! I pay all of my bill through it and I’m supprized that you aren’t set up and use the service. We have had some of our members who have had some problems, but the majority of them are because when they set there payment up they didn’t waite the two weeks for our service to verify the address and loan/bill number of there customer…yes we verify were every payment goes and if its not correct then we norify the member. I did have one member who’s cable bill was not paid and when we ordered the copy of the check it was sent to the wrong place…but the service reissued the check and paid all late fees…..you really will like it Robyn…I haven’t licked a stamp in two years! 🙂 Mary Jo
I’m at the point where if it’s NOT paid online, I’ll totally forget about it. It’s so much easier and I don’t have to worry about the mail being late or anything. Only thing is, make sure you type in the correct date that you want the bill to be paid. I screwed that up on one of them last month and it caused me some problems. Then again, almost anyone is a better accountant that I am, so you should be just fine. I’d go for it, totally.
I dont use Bill pay, it usually cost you $$ after a certain amount of time. I go to the website of who I owe money to ( i.e., Quest, Chase, AT&T ) and initiate a payment there. That way, it doesn’t cost me $$, and usually post to my account with-in 3 days.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
Pre-authorized debits and electronic bill paying is the cat’s pajamas. I can’t remember the last time I actually wrote a cheque out and mailed something. I do all our banking online and as many have said in the comments above, you are in control of who and what you pay electronically (and with my bank, there’s always an “are you sure” screen/button before the money is whisked away into the ether. We have our utilities, mortgage, etc. set up for the pre-authorized debit each month, so we don’t have to worry about forgetting to pay something. It rocks! 😉
I agree with everyone here — I’ve been paying my bills online for about 3 years through B@fA and have never had a problem. Love it! It literally takes only minutes to pay a stack of bills, as opposed to writing out checks, stuffing the envelopes (double checking the correct check is in the correct envelope), writing our return address on the envelope, stamping it then actually hauling my ass to the mailbox to mail them. Since I’ve been paying online, I’ve never once had a late payment – hooray!
Electronic bill-pay has saved me from myself. I was one of those procrastinators who would walk around for a month with the bills in her purse, but never get around to mailing them. The money was in the account, but I never sent the bills, always resulting in late fees, etc. C’mon, I know that there are others out there like that. I’ve had people confess it to me. Anyway, I started electronic bill-pay about…I think it’s been six years now. Not a single late fee since. I only get paid once a month, so I sit down at the computer (either at home or at work) sometime during the week before my payday and schedule my payments online. The money comes out the same day that the direct deposit goes in, and whatever is left is to live on for the rest of the month. It works very, very well for me.
I set up bill pay for my bellsouth acct, when i lived in mississippi. After the first month, wherein they didn’t transfer the money, i got a bill with a nsf fee and a late payment penalty.
I said to my self, “Self, WTF?”
After talking to the bell south people, it was determined that their system decided that my checking acct number was not in actuality a real checking acct, when in fact, it was.
They canceled the late payment fee, but somehow i got stiffed with the nsf fee. How was my bank able to charge a nsf fee (yes, I did have plenty of money in my acct) when the bell south people said they couldn’t get to my acct?
The bank said that bell south would have to resolve the nsf issue.
Anyways, long story short, i paid with a check, and canceled the billpay.
Unfortunately, bell south must have forgotten to enter it into their system, cause the same thing happened the next month.
I love it too. I use my Banks online bill pay to pay everything and it works out great. They charge $4.95 per month but by the time you figure in stamps, checks, time, etc. It’s a good deal.
I wrote two checks last year 🙂 That’s it. The rest is either debit card or online bill pay. 🙂
I’ve been paying all of my bills online for 10 years or so and I think my dad has been doing it for around 15. I love it! I can’t imagine trying to keep track of everything without my computer.
I don’t use the bank’s online billing website. I do everything through Quicken (my bank offers some kind of online banking with Quicken account). The majority of my bills are scheduled to pay themselves automatically every month. I have a few that are auto-deducted from my checking account and I have Quicken set up to automatically record the deduction. All I have to do with them is reconcile the statements against the account every month (takes about 5 seconds).
The only problems I’ve had with online banking had nothing to do with the bank and everything to do with my deadbeat former boss. He wasn’t all that concerned about getting us our paychecks on time. Since I had everything set up to automatically pay, I had a few things bounce when the paycheck didn’t get there until 4 days after it was due.
Another Christine using B@nk of @meric@. Absolutely fabulous – Makes life so much easier. We pay everything, including our mortgage, online.
C’mon – take the plunge! It’s fabulous!
like everyone else….i pay almost all my bills online and love it. i don’t use my bank’s billpay (i just don’t trust bank of america), but pay directly through the debtor’s website – deducting straight from the bank account. quick, secure, and you always get an “are you SURE???” screen so you can catch the $1000 vs $100 errors.
the only problem i’ve had was with my own stupidity – one credit card has a “same day pay” option on their website. i procrastinated, and then thought i was sliding in a safe 2 hours before the deadline. unfortunately, i was looking at my west coast clock, and the website was looking at the credit card company’s east coast clock, so i ended up being late with my payment. doh!
Robyn, we pay all our bills online and have never (knock wood) had a problem. Including our mortgage.
I, too, am an online bill paying addict. Honestly, with as much personal shit as I’ve been wading through since October, if I *didn’t* have online bill pay (through my B@fA account) to do all this mundane, yet necessarily evil stuff, I swear I’d be homeless, with ruined credit and no car (’cause it would have been repo’d). I love my auto bill pay.
And with respect to Jennifer Lopez… I wonder if she’s pregnant too, hence the quickie wedding? Things that make you go, “Hmmmm?”
Cheers,
~Aly
Go for it!! I use BillPay through my bank and I love it. So easy, so fast. Almost as good as a foot massage – ah! I’ve never had any problems with it. Thank you B@A!!!
Funny you should say that about the mortgage. A good friend of mine left the decimal point out of her mortgage payment and actually sent in an e-payment of $98,000. REALLY! It was late Friday when she discovered the error and was nearly hysterical all weekend until she could talk to a live person and correct it. Which they were able to do over the phone first thing Monday.
I’d sign up myself but my bank wants $6/month for the service and that’s just wrong.
-Chris
Julia Roberts made the announcement so early because she was photographed on a beach with a significant bulge protruding from her mid-section. I saw the pic, and there really was no denying it! I cannot believe I know such useless garbage. Ack.
I use Web Bill Pay as well. No problems here, I love it! We also have Ch@se as our mortgage company and we’ve had no problems. We spend less on WBP fees than we did on stamps!
Bobbie Sue
Electronic payments ROCK! I pay everything I can electronically and I never have had a problem. I’ve gotten to the point where I forget to write out AND mail the checks that I have to write out. My condo assocation has gotten used to me forgetting to mail my check on time. They are investigating direct payment now. Hee! Hee!
Chase Manhattan is the nicest bank I’ve ever dealt with (no, I don’t work for them, have stock in them, or know anyone that works for them). Their online mortgage payment ROCKS. Wachovia? They suck rocks. Hate.
I have only one bill left that I actually have to write a check for, my car loan, – because yet another suck-ass bank doesn’t offer an online payment option. Every bill I have, from water and power to credit card, I pay online. I do NOT use the bank’s bill pay – it’s costs 5.95 a month and remember – wachovia=hate. I use each site (including my auto insurance) to pay each bill. It works great, I’ve only had one problem, and it was minor, and that was our city bought the utilities from a private company and are just starting online pay services. It said my payment was an “error”. It was quickly cleared up, no prob. I pay cable, roadrunner, water, power, auto insurance, mortgage, credit cards, cell phone, land line, garbage, IPS and something else (can’t remember- oh yeah! the exterminator!) online and have for years. SCREW writing checks! I write ONE a month. And I bitch long and loud when I do it!
Come over to the dark side, Robyn 🙂
To re-iterate…electronic bill pay is the cat’s pajamas. As an avowed procrastinator, this service has saved my ass many times. It’s just so…EASY!!!!!
Robyn, dahling. Do I not qualify to become a member of the GFY burb? I applied a while ago (a couple of weeks? A month? something.) and have yet to receive your blessing. I’m feeling all kinds of left out… ::sob::
i LOVE paying bills online. when i get a new accout that it isn’t available i get so mad. i have my whole system down now in the computer. now i can pay all mine online except my car, mortgage (i could but they charge a fee for this?!) and 1 credit card.
most of mine are available throught their own individual acounts. i thik it may work better if you did go through your bank to do all of them from one place.
the only problem i have had was that providian set up their system differently and instead of accepting the payment as a direct debit, it tried to do it as an electronic check (what’s the difference?!) well my credit union is stupid and our actual account number is NOT the number that is on the check (for most people their account number). so a payment didn’t go through, until i set it up differently.
i love it though. wouldn’t go back to all the check writing for anything! good luck.
That’s funny that you ask about bill pay horror stories because my funniest bill pay story actually comes from sending a CHECK! My husband paid our car loan off when we refinanced a couple years ago – or thought he did – by mailing a check for the total (five digit number) after calling them for that “payoff amount”. We were surprised when we continued to get bills in the mail so we called them up and asked why – they had sent our five digit check through as a three digit check… Um, hello, when somebody sends me a five digit check I’m sure as hell not cashing it for a smaller amount! Stupid bank.
I have my gas/electric, local phone, and long distance phone set up as automatic withdrawls from my checking account. My credit union charges a monthly fee for billpay service, so I don’t use it. My car and house insurance company isn’t set up to handle autopay, but they have a toll free customer service number, so I just call them when the bill is due and give them my debit card number over the phone. The only checks I have to write are water and trash pick up. Can I say I HATE WRITING CHECKS!@#$%^! I had one problem when I moved. The bank sent the local phone company one month’s payment twice. Also, my long distance company once charged me a late fee, which is impossible since I’m on autopay. It was their fault. The took the money out of my checking account, but did not post it to my customer account. They fixed the problem immediately. So the moral of that story is that you still must examine your bank statement and bill statements each month. Don’t just assume the right amounts were taken out. Otherwise, autopay/billpay is great!
We have been paying bills online since it was invented! We now do it via Citibank and have NEVER, I repeat, NEVER had a problem. It’s so convenient and saves lots of $$ on stamps. It even puts a picture of your returned checks that you write (should you ever have to write one) when they are cashed. It’s pretty f’in cool!
:)Jackie
LURVE the bill pay. You can even pay for magazine subscriptions, one-time bills like from Publishers Clearing House (shut UP)on there. AND, it’s done in seconds. Go sign up now. hurry. GO!
Heh. That’s a funny dream, Robyn.
This last weekend my brother and sister-in-law threw us a baby shower, and the guests could bet (!) on such things as the baby’s weight, length, birthdate and gender. I had to submit to such things as having my ASS stared at to supposedly determine the kid’s sex. (The ass-starer said it was a boy. Then she informed me since her mom is a pediatric nurse, she “knew” what she was talking about. Killed me.)
So anyhow, it seems the general opinion is that we’re going to have a boy, including most of my family. I don’t really care one way or the other, and M. seems to be without preference also. That’s probably very wise under the circumstances, if for instance he professed any desire to have a boy and I gave birth to a girl, I’m sure I’d kick him square in the testicles just out of principle.
I do appreciate you being such a willing and
patient babysitter, even if just in your dreams.
-Shelley