It's all tax-deductible, we're fairly incorruptible

[austin_dern]

I'm beginning to lose my love for automatic payment schemes. I didn't really have any before moving to Singapore, where the power company had me signed up for Giro deductions before I knew what was going on. Giro schemes work out pretty well, though: every month they'd send me a bill, and if I didn't contest the amount then on the specified date they take the appropriate amount out of the designated account. That was lovely. It was all the important things about paying bills without the fuss of having to actually keep track of what's paid or what's due or what's in waiting yet. I liked living with as few bills as possible to have to pay, and was soon converted to things like leaving my student loan payments on automated schedules.

Well, I set my car insurance to be paid automatically, once a month, which matched their expectation of monthly payments. And this was working fine, and while they sent me bills every month I didn't pay attention to them since they were actually paid by the time the bills arrived. All was well, though. My student loan people even send me monthly announcements that my Sisyphean efforts to pay off graduate school continue.

Until. I got a letter from my insurers telling me they were cancelling my policy for non-payment. A quick phone call later and it turned out my bank for no obvious reason decided to not send the November payment (which would have finished my bills for the year), and didn't think that was worth telling me about. I got that straightened out quickly, with just one twenty-minute wait while the insurance company was looking for an appropriate agent who would call me back ``in five minutes'' (they called back just as I had decided I'd attempt calling again), but I am irritated that I have this trouble in the first place.

Trivia: The patent for Thomas Edison's quadruplex telegraph was filed jointly with Western Union chief engineer George B Prescott, though Prescott contributed little to the development of the technology. Source: Edison: A Biography, Matthew Josephson.

Currently Reading: The Age Of Gold: The California Gold Rush And The New American Dream, H W Brands.

Comments

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

Is the automatic billing done through the bank or the insurance company?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

This payment was would be through the bank. I set it to `pay bills' on a regular payment schedule. I'm starting to think I'd be better off putting what I can on my main credit card, since that is set up to automatically withdraw enough to pay my account every month, and I get frequent flier mileage through it, and it's worked on that automatic payment for several years now without error.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Now I'm worried. I just set up my credit union account to do that for my auto loan, but I'd hate to think they might forget a payment! Well... I suppose it's probably all right as long as I check each month. And my friend uses their bill pay service and has been happy with it.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, things would have been all right if I checked my accounts every month to make sure the payments were being made. Or, I suppose, if I checked the monthly bills to make sure their amounts were due. Or if I'd paid in a lump sum back in March instead of putting it on monthly payments, but there wasn't any difference in the total due and I thought why not make it a small monthly ding rather than one big lump at once.

The long periods of utter quiet and normalcy in these things made for trouble for me. I wasn't being vigilant.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

I don't trust the bank to actually make the payments for me. If they screw up, it doesn't really hurt them any.

I do trust the individual companies themselves to submit a payment request to my credit card. It's in their own best interest to make sure it does. I would never do this with a checking account or debit card, however, because these don't have the same consumer protection that a CC does.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately my car insurance company isn't set up to accept credit cards --- they're a small company with a rather restricted risk pool, but they make up for that by having ready access to people who can actually approve things --- but otherwise I think that'd probably be the way to have it set.

[moonfires.livejournal.com]

We're sailing on the wide accountantcy!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

And isn't it kind of remarkable there aren't really that many songs about insurance or accounting companies? It'd make it easier for me to talk about my finances more if there were.