OT - Argh - Stupid, Stupid, Stupid!!!

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)©
email me at nalee1964 (at) insightbb (dot) com
http://community.webshots.com/user/mgcmdjeep

Would you like to feel better?

And note I'm supposedly an accountant with many years experience and a lot
of time on computers. Other people think I'm good at what I do and pay for
my advice. (Right)

Two years ago while paying my bill online for use of tax software, a bill in
excess of $500.00, I managed to leave out the decimal point.

I still thank God and his angels that at least I made the payment to a
company that has real people in the receivable department and it only took
me two weeks to get my money back. Also pretty happy that Charlie never
opens the mail and that our credit is in good enough shape I was able to
keep everyone else paid and happy for those two weeks.

Jo


"Magic Mood Jeep)" wrote in message
...
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))
email me at nalee1964 (at) insightbb (dot) com
http://community.webshots.com/user/mgcmdjeep

On 2006-07-17, Magic Mood Jeep© penned:
Ok, This is a weird thing I did, but really STUPID!

Not stupid. I also swear by the nicknames on the online payment
thing. And I've definitely transferred money to/from the wrong
account before (we each have our own accounts, plus the joint account,
plus Oscar's medical account, and I have full access to all four).

One thought -- banks will only keep your statements online for a few
months, and I found out the hard way a few years back that you often
have to pay to get paper statements after the fact, and after some
amount of time they are archived and good luck even getting a copy.

So. Even though I do almost everything electronically, I still insist
on getting statements on paper. I figure even if I were consistent
about entering things into a finance program (I'm not), official bank
documents are much more convincing when I need to talk to a court,
collections agent, person who owes me money, etc.

Never did get the $1400 or so back from Kirby for a vacuum cleaner I
returned within Virginia's three day return period ...

Ah well. Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from
bad judgement. I learned a lot in those first few years out on my
own. The Kirby is only one of a series of foolish decisions.

--
monique, who spoils Oscar unmercifully

pictures: http://www.bounceswoosh.org/rpca

Cheryl Perkins 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....

snip

This sort of thing is easy to do. I once sent a payment for a phone
that
I'd long since had disconnected, and it took the phone company a
while to figure out why someone was sending them money for a
non-existent account.
It took them less than a month, though, because I got it straightened
out before the next billing period, and promptly deleted that phone
account
from the website.

I've done that too

Used to have AT&T Wireless (now known as Singular, after they were sold to
Cellular One), and sent them a payment that was supposed to go to AT&T
(landline phone). I no longer *had* an AT&T Wireless account with them
either, but they held onto that money for 3 weeks, until I realized what I
had done, and called them & asked for it back.

At that time I deleted the AT&T Wireless from the bill pay system.

I also sent a payment to Verizon Wireless (our current cell phone carrier)
instead of Vectron Energy, which is our Natural Gas supplier boggle, but
it wasn't that much, so we let it stay there until we 'used it up'.

Why DH *still* lets me do the bills is amazing


I also sent some money intended for the power company to the phone
company only last month, but fortunately, it wasn't a large amount
and I decided
to leave the credit with the phone company.

I mean, who actually reads that screen where they say something like
'Are you really sure? Completely? Click here to confirm.'? I guess
I'm going to have to start doing so.

Isn't that just *soooooooooooo* annoying???

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

Monique Y. Mudama wrote:

Ah well. Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from
bad judgement. I learned a lot in those first few years out on my
own. The Kirby is only one of a series of foolish decisions.

OK, but can you top this one? I lent $1300 to a friend (not a close
friend, btw) who was on the verge of losing her apartment if she didn't
pay the rent - *AFTER* she told me she had a compulsive debting problem.
How stupid is that??? I was even out of work at the time, although I
still had a lot of money in my savings account.

The chronology went like this: first she asked to borrow the money. I
said yes. Then she said she had the debting problem. But by then I felt
I'd made a promise and didn't want to break it, especially if it would
cause her to be evicted. I didn't realize at the time that this is how
she manipulates people - by creating drama and crisis in her life and
then getting people to rescue her.

At the time, a mutual friend of ours said "DON'T DO IT!!" But I couldn't
bring myself to go back on my promise to help. I should have listened to
that good advice! This woman still owes me $900 from that, and I've been
pretty broke over the past 3 years. Needless to say, I do not consider
her any kind of friend anymore. Just because I was stupid enough to trust
her, does not excuse her being a sleazoid. (I am not a disciple of WC
Fields. )

This woman recently approached the same mutual friend (the one who tried
to warn me off lending her the money). She wanted to hire my friend as a
temporary assistant to do some paperwork. But my friend declined, saying,
"I don't feel comfortable working for you after the way you stiffed Joyce
on the money you owe her. It just wouldn't feel ethical to me." Now that's
a real friend!

Just thought you should know that you don't have to be young to make a
serious error in judgement.

Joyce

On 2006-07-17, Jo Firey penned:
Would you like to feel better?

And note I'm supposedly an accountant with many years experience and
a lot of time on computers. Other people think I'm good at what I
do and pay for my advice. (Right)

Two years ago while paying my bill online for use of tax software, a
bill in excess of $500.00, I managed to leave out the decimal point.

I still thank God and his angels that at least I made the payment to
a company that has real people in the receivable department and it
only took me two weeks to get my money back. Also pretty happy that
Charlie never opens the mail and that our credit is in good enough
shape I was able to keep everyone else paid and happy for those two
weeks.

Did I read that right? $50K? Wow. I don't think I would have had
this problem, because the check would have bounced tout suite.

--
monique, who spoils Oscar unmercifully

pictures: http://www.bounceswoosh.org/rpca

Magic Mood Jeep© wrote:
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....

Call them again and ask to speak to a supervisor. If you have had a good
history of on-time payments with them, they will not ding you for this.
It's happened to me before, they've even waived the late payment fee.

--
Victor M. Martinez
Owned and operated by the Fantastic Seven (TM)
Send your spam he
Email me he

"Monique Y. Mudama" wrote in message
...
On 2006-07-17, Jo Firey penned:
Would you like to feel better?

And note I'm supposedly an accountant with many years experience and
a lot of time on computers. Other people think I'm good at what I
do and pay for my advice. (Right)

Two years ago while paying my bill online for use of tax software, a
bill in excess of $500.00, I managed to leave out the decimal point.

I still thank God and his angels that at least I made the payment to
a company that has real people in the receivable department and it
only took me two weeks to get my money back. Also pretty happy that
Charlie never opens the mail and that our credit is in good enough
shape I was able to keep everyone else paid and happy for those two
weeks.

Did I read that right? $50K? Wow. I don't think I would have had
this problem, because the check would have bounced tout suite.

And I never have that kind of money in my checking account. Would chew a
client up one side and down the other for leaving that kind of money in a
checking account.

I was working on settling out my mothers estate and a few other things that
landed enough there for a few days to make a mistake like that possible.
That's also why I was upset and careless. The only reason it took as long
as it did to get my money back was they had to have a company officer sign
the check to send back to me.

Jo

"Magic Mood Jeep©" wrote:
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!!!

Don't worry *too* much. I used to make much worse errors than that,
and financing companies and credit card companies never seemed to bat
an eyelash. Most of my bill payments are automatic nowadays, so I
can't make as many mistakes as I used to.