This new everything digital world really blows, a lot of the time. And where it blows most is when your money is involved.
…’Member when it was bill-paying time, and you’d sit down with your check book and balance everything, and categorize all the bills in date order, and start John Hancocking until your hand would start to cramp and the ink on your pen would go out? And ‘member how then you’d send them all out into the world, where based on postage times and then check holding, you knew you could easily buy yourself a grace-period of say 3-5 days, wherein even if the money wasn’t in your account now, it would be by then, and yet it wouldn’t be seen as a “late payment,” because the date on your check was within the window of time, and it wasn’t your problem that snail mail and lazy tellers were holding the money back from where it needed to be, cuz by that point, your job was already done?
…I fucking miss that.
…Now everything is automatic and instant. There is no grace at all. In the period of time that you pop your tire, and need to buy a replacement NOW, (even being obviously unplanned and not in your budget), instant deduction is merciless. Even the 75 cent candy bar at the gas station, comes out of your account before you’ve even opened the foil on the wrapper.
…And they try to sell this “automatic” world of deductions to us, like it’s a GOOD thing. Like we will never have to worry about anything ever again, simply because our money is in their hands, and we can feel free to go whole months at a time without so much as seeing a literal penny of it.
…Money is now, just a code of numbers to our banks and bill services. It is nothing tangible and what little control we once had if it, is almost completely depleted now with the advent of “Automatic Bill Pay.”
I fucking HATE it.
…First of all…I don’t have student loans or a credit card, and yet I am so fixed on my income that I need to have total control of every dime at all times. I do not live in a financial world wherein you can just suck pockets of money from my account anytime between the 1st and the 5th, or 15th and 22nd at random, for amounts that constantly change due to service use, and/or emergency non-budgeted needs…like a popped tire, for instance.
…I cannot have you just deducting things at your whim. And I tell the bill-people this…because you HAVE to tell them it now, or–in keeping with the theme–they automatically enroll you in it.
I was put on hold for 54 minutes this morning to fight about just this, after checking my account balance. Finally getting a human person, their mind was blown that I was upset for having to wait so long, and that they were moving my money without permission.
…$50, now gone.
Me: Who said you could auto-deduct the $50?
Them: Its automated process now. We just do.
Me: Not my money, you don’t. I already had this conversation last month, with some other guy at your location. You should listen to the recording of the conversation –that I know you have due to the fact you declared you were doing it at the beginning of this one.
Them: Well, we sent you a contract in the mail stating the terms agreed on in the conversation.
Me: Right, and nowhere on there did it say “automatic.” In fact I was very specific on that.
Them: Only twice at the beginning, of your recording, but at the end when he said–
Me: –Twice. Twice I stated it. So stop the auto-pay.
Them: …But in the letter we sent you, we indicated that the payments would be set up in this way.
Me: Which disregards my entire conversation with him?
Them: Per the terms in the letter–
Me: –Look, I didn’t sign any letter agreement–
Them: You don’t need to sign it. It is a paper copy of the original agreement made.
Me: It is not, or it would say that I distinctly mentioned it TWICE in the phone call NOT to auto-pay. Under ANY circumstance. My authorization was verbal then, and it’s verbal now…and recorded. Take the auto-pay off now!
Them: There’s no need to get upset ma’am…
Me: No?! You don’t think so?
Them: We can rearrange the agreement.
Me: We can put the agreement back where it was before you “rearranged” it to begin with, in that when the bill is due: I will pay it, with the several options of payment method allowed to me — up to and including a check –and not at any time involving you, sucking the money out of my account without my authorization. You got all that?
Them: Cancelling auto-payment. Yes.
…Look. I know it’s this chick’s job, on behalf of her company, to suck us all dry and stupid once a month with “procedure” and “contract negotiations.” I get that. But it doesn’t mean that knowledge will keep me from being pissed off about it, and — yes — even taking it out on her, because she happens to be good at being conniving. If she wants a pat on the back for her talents in this, she should look to her boss.
…I am going to take it personally when it is made personal, and I won’t feel even a little bit bad about being a dick to people, when it seems to be the only way to communicate with them. And I gotta say, what really is not helping them (in this world of “automated absolutely everything”) is being put on hold for nearly an hour by a machine, so you’ve been stewing already, and are pissed off ten times what you were before you even called to begin with, before a live human actually picks up the phone.
This is my statement to the financial world as a whole:
If you touch my shit without permission: I go all Lorena Bobbitt on you. That happens to be MY “automated process.” M’kay?
~D
