The latest bee in my bonnet is our phone company. Not the one I've been meaning to sever ties with. The one that provides our cell phone connections. It used to be just fine. I always mail the payment the day after I get the bill. Always. When they receive the payment, they send me a text of thanks. I'm not crazy about that, but they DO have my cell number, heh, heh.
Anyhoo... it was never a problem until last month, when they charged me a LATE FEE of $10. What in the NOT-HEAVEN! I mailed that September bill in plenty of time, as usual. It was mailed on September 12, due on September 22, which was a Sunday. Yet the phone company said they received my payment on September 23, a Monday. Well, DUH! Isn't that when most businesses get their mail? On weekdays, not weekends? The postmark clearly showed that it was mailed with enough time to get there.
I can't believe the post office is THAT slow! More like the phone company needs to revamp the way they send and receive bills! The latest bill arrived on November 9. The date on the bill was November 1. So it took eight days to get to me? The Pony Express was faster than that!
Anyhoo... I wrote out my check, which is due on November 22. On Sunday, November 10, I drove it over to the main post office in Sis-Town, where I TOOK IT INSIDE to mail in the slot on the wall. I realize that mail does not go out on Sunday. Nor will it go out on Monday, due to the Veteran's Day holiday. But that bill will be waiting to ship out first thing on Tuesday, November 12.
Here's the thing... once inside the main post office lobby, I could put my bill in the pull-down flip-door thingy that would fit a package about the size of a shoebox. Or I could put my bill in the slot in the wall above that pull-down flip-door. I usually just put it in the flip part, close it, then look to make sure the letter fell out. This time, I got to thinking that maybe they have a separate bin for packages to fall into. So I put my bill in the slot.
NOOOO! I did not hear my bill fall down into a bin. I reached a couple fingers into the slot. I could FEEL my bill lying there! As if it was on a little shelf. I couldn't push it farther. I couldn't pull it back. Oh, how this venture was proving to be folly!
I left my bill lying there. Nobody else could see it. Nor could they pull it out of the slot. It's just the idea that it was lying on a shelf. What if some passive-aggressive mailperson (surely there is no such thing, heh, heh) decided to just take the bin, and leave my bill lying there?
I explained the situation to The Pony, who chuckled. He said there is a little "ramp" shelf behind that slot, and mail is supposed to slide down into the bin, but it often gets stuck. Sometimes there's a whole bundle lying there. And it would be fine, a worker would put my bill in the bin as they picked up that mail.
Well... let's hope so. I don't want another $10 late fee. Funny how our credit card payment, and the checks to Lowe's and Menards, are cashed within three days of me mailing them.
As I've probably mentioned in the past, we have had a lot of issues with the mail. Because of "lost" payments - yes, multiple, we ended up changing everything to online. Nothing against The Pony, at all. We have mail carriers that are very reliable, so not putting all into one basket, but there have been problems throughout our county, as well as other places in Minnesota. When we mail something here, in small town MN, it goes to the big post office in St Paul, then distributed from there. So, in theory, it could take a week for a letter to go from my home to another home in small town MN. Things are better with the mail now. It used to be we might get mail 3 days out of the week, even if the preview showed daily mail to be delivered. It would make me nervous when I would see something important for my dad and not have it get delivered for 2 days or more. One should not have to stress if they will get their mail delivered or received in a timely matter. I just watched a cute movie where they had a "dead letter office" which was used for Dear Santa letters. They would do the actual delivery requested in the letters. I know it's not realistic, but it sure made for a great homespun heartwarming movie, in this world of chaos. Ranee
ReplyDeleteRae,
DeleteI understand that it's nothing against The Pony. When he first started, one of his fellow CCAs was fired for dumping a tray of mail in a dumpster! That's bad enough, but it was on a main street, where people driving by could see, and one of them called the office. The manager went to investigate, and knew exactly whose route that was.
My mom used to get her prescriptions by mail. That's why I never will! She was always stressing because they were taking so long to get there. That, and I don't want my meds out on the county blacktop road, where anybody can take them.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is because the USPS changed the way they process the mail. For example, we used to have a slot for "local" mail. Like if I mailed it in Sis-Town at the main post office, it would get sorted and go directly out to Sis-Town addresses the next day. NOW, all the mail gets send from there down to a processing center in Casino Town, and then sent back to Sis-Town to be delivered. That adds a day or two.
I'll still take my chances on mailing my bill payments. My internet is not so reliable that I want to risk that as my only option, and I certainly do not like automatic payments, because they are so hard to stop when you drop the service.
All that said... I am now off to pay my DISH bill online, which I started doing because it took so long to get the bill and return the payment. I'm pretty sure they do that on purpose, trying to make people do the automated payments!
I get my bills online via email and pay them online and will keep doing that since I learned a few years ago that all local mail from our big city was being sent interstate to another big city for sorting and delivery, it was something they were trialling for some stupid government reason and I don't know if they still do it and don't care. Paying online means they get their money immediately and I don't have to go to the post office in searing summer heat or chilly winter rain.
ReplyDeleteRiver,
DeleteI am happy that you have reliable internet service. When I tried to pay my DISH bill as I mentioned in the comment above, it took 40 minutes. The DISH log-in page wouldn't load. No bad weather to block my satellite internet. Just it being contrary, or something wrong on the DISH end. Sure, it takes longer to drive the mail to the main post office. But usually I am going by there anyway, and T-Hoe protects me from the weather. It's less stressful than relying on my internet.