Remember last Saturday, when I braved the early snow to go mail my DISH bill? The one Farmer H made no effort to take to town Friday night on the way to his auction?
Since that snow had started early, I just went to the dead mouse smelling post office, not the main branch, which is another five miles farther. I was there an hour before the time the mail is picked up. Even took my DISH bill inside the building itself. The dead mouse part. Didn't just drop it in the outside box, in case they decided that they didn't really want to walk out there in the snow. I wouldn't put it past those dead-mousy workers.
Anyhoo... that was on the morning of Jan 19th. My bill had been getting back to DISH in a timely manner. You know it takes forever for me to get it. I'm watching the mail in the days leading up to the end of the month, looking for it. I mail it back the very next day. It had been getting back to DISH in three days.
This one was due, as usual, on the 25th. Since I looked back at my online payment record, I knew that they'd been arriving quicker than in the past. So I took that chance.
I still don't know why my DISH bill is generated on the 10th of the month, and I don't get it until the 18th. That's crazy. I think my mailman only delivers on days he/she wants to. Sometimes I get nothing, and then next day I'll find EmBee stuffed to the gills with envelopes and junk mail catalogs.
Anyhoo... I checked my online account on the 25th. And of course my payment was not in. So I made a one-time online payment from my checking account. I refuse to do automatic payments! So now I've made TWO payments for my DISH bill. So it will already be paid for next month, once that check arrives. It's happened like that before, and they gave me proper credit. It's just the idea that either the dead mouse smelling post office is slacking, or DISH is deliberately dragging their payments-received feet in an effort to persuade people to switch to automatic payments.
Even accounting for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday, when the post office was closed, three days is three days. That would have put my payment in the DISH coffers by Wednesday the 23rd. Surely it should have been credited by Friday.
A Pony Express rider carrying gold dust in his saddlebags could have made it sooner.
6 comments:
You don't have to go automatic, called direct debit here in Aus, but online payments that you do yourself seems like a better idea than getting to the Post Office, then fretting over whether the cheque will arrive and be credited in time. So why not pay online every month?
Maybe also ask them why it takes 8 days for your bill to arrive in the first place. Can you arrange to get the bill by email instead?
River,
I prefer to live in the past. I still have some files on a 5.1 floppy disk! It took me forever to trust the 3.5 disk. Then a CD. Then a flash drive. I still like watching my movies on DVD. I'm just an old-fashioned gal!
Aside from that, I'm always afraid my internet will go out. I can't find crap on my phone. It takes forever to load something on it. So if my internet goes out again because I have a bad hub (!), or if we lose power, or my DISH satellite can't pick up a signal...how am I going to pay my bill? They have stopped mailing my statements before when I called to make a payment, and I had to go back in and reset the settings.
In fact, DISH does send me an email saying my bill is ready. They just don't physically mail the bill on time, I think. Or else it's the post office dropping the ball.
I just want things to stay the same, and get my bill in a timely manner! I don't think that's too much to ask. I think they do this on purpose, hoping to get more people to sign up for automatic payments. Every month, my bill contains propaganda about going paperless! I am digging in my heels! I'm hard-headed like that.
You are a stickler for punctuality, aren't you? All this new fangled stuff makes me feel old!
Kathy,
I just like to pay my bills on time, in the old-fashioned way, and DISH and the dead mouse smelling post office conspire against me! It I had it my way, I'd send Farmer H to the corporate offices with a goat to barter, now that all our chickens have been murdered.
I get a couple of my bills online via email and I pay them online. But I understand your concern about DISH going out, especially in your winters.
River,
The plot thickens! I just looked online, and found out my check was credited on Jan 27. How is THAT possible? That was a SUNDAY! So now I have a credit waiting for next month's bill, which they say will be available on Feb 11.
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