wrote:
Magic Mood Jeep© wrote:
Ok, This is a weird thing I did, but really STUPID!

I am in charge of all our bill-paying: mortgage, car loan,
utilities, credit cards, etc., etc....

Our bank of choice is Chase (actually, JP Morgan/Chase - our bank,
Bank One, was acquired by them, and they seem to be OK), and we do
the online bill-pay thing (saves us bookoo in stamps, plus, a *lot*
of it is electronic transfer, which only takes a day or two, so the
money gets to the creditors quicker than by mailing a check).

Our phone (landline) is AT&T, used to be SBC (which, about 10 years
ago, was AT&T, and why they've changed back & forth is one of those
mystery things that could only be explained by a corporate attorney,
and us lay-people *still* wouldn't understand it), and one of our
credit cards is managed by Citi Corp, but is 'sponsored' by AT&T,
and the 'pay to' name is "AT&T Universal Card".

When paying the bills online, they are listed alphabetically.

DH is a salaried employee, and they are paid monthly - on the *last
Wednesday* of the month (another one of those mysteries....)

Friday, I get a call from Citi, and they were like , "umm, we didn't
get a payment from you....", and I was "I *KNOW* I sent it"... I
look in Quicken (we don't even use a paper register anymore, the
only checks we actually write ourselves are for the auto insurance),
and there it is, plain as day..... While I have the Citi guy on the
phone, I check the online banking.... whoops! It says "AT&T"
instead of "AT&T Universal Card"..... Seems that last month, while
paying the bills, I sent the "AT&T Universal Card" payment ($400) to
"AT&T" the phone company, by simply clicking the *wrong* box! This
Citi guy is very nice and understanding (nothing like the AmEx guy
that someone wrote about here recently), but wants me to make a
payment over the phone. Not gonna happen. He wants to give me a
phone # to call back on - I don't even want it (how am I to know I'm
not calling some guy in a garage up the road?). I explain that I
*will* make a payment, but over *not* over the phone, it will be via
my bank's online services. It will *not* be the $400 that we sent
to the wrong company, at least not until we get it *back* from the
wrong company (which they say will take *three weeks*!!!). I did go
online after discussing it with DH and sent a payment of the minimum
due, and that leaves us with a bunch of money less than we thought
we were gonna have to play with this month!

So now we will probably have a "mark" on our credit report because
the payment that I sent on Friday was about a week-and-a-half late,
and all our interest rates will more than likely go up....

But, I have found out that I can assign nicknames to the online bill
payment names, without having to change the "pay to" names - so
"AT&T" the phone company is now labeled "PHONE" so I *will not* do
this again!!!

--�
The ONE and ONLY
lefthanded-pathetic-paranoid-psychotic-sarcastic-wiseass-ditzy
former-blonde in Bloomington! (And proud of it, too)©

Oh, don't feel bad. I admire simply the fact that you manage a
paperless bill paying system. I do too many boneheaded things *on
paper* to even think about bill paying online.

It's not completely paperless - I still get all the bills/statements via
regular snailmail, otherwise, I will have a major brain fart and forget to
pay one or two if I don't actually have it in front of me


Don't worry about a mark on your credit, either! I checked our credit
last week, just because "they" say you should. I was sure we had a
spotless, pristine credit rating. I was sure that it was so high that
potential creditors would probably fall on their knees and sing
hosannas when they saw it.
Not so. Apparently a bunch of arbitrary sh*t is figured in. Much more
than promptness, ratio of credit to income, all that. I asked about
it.
They said we got points off because we don't have a home mortage co.
reporting anymore (I thought that was a good thing). Also points off
because our credit limits are too low on our cards. (I thought that
was
a good thing too. One card I actually *asked* them to lower the credit
limit to $250 because I only use it on the internet and I thought that
would be helpful if there ever was card fraud.

I have one CC with a 0 balance, kept for emergencies only. The others are
used for online shopping and stuff like that. Just need to kick myself & DH
because we have a tendancy to go a bit overboard with the online shopping
sometimes

Sherry