The trouble with things that only work sporadically — as opposed to all the time, which would ostensibly be what they were designed to do — is that they easily end up becoming extremely time consuming!
Recently, I have dealt with this sort of situation with regards to a couple of the credit card companies with whom I have accounts.
As a result of various alleged "updates" they were performing on their websites, I suddenly found myself unable to log in and check my balance. Moreover, it also meant that I was unable to log in and go make a timely payment.
Of course their argument is that I should be set up on autopay, and my argument is that if your facilities aren't working (so that I can go in and pay an account when it is due) that is your problem not mine.
In general, that is not how the banking or the greater technology industry views things. Besides, they are a giant conglomerate; I am a small and meaningless individual.
Of course, some part of me can empathize with the "Well, we're doing our best" argument, although sometimes I find myself wondering whether they really are doing their best, or are they simply expecting customers to fall into line with their incompetence and accept that as the "normal state of affairs" rather than expect a working situation?
In the end, I ended up avoiding exposure to the possibility of a late fee for not being able to log in and authorize my payment by calling the number on the back of my credit card and making a manual payment by phone. It cost me a $2.50 "convenience fee," which is a lot less than a $34.00 late fee.
Situation saved, of course, but nonetheless that is 15 minutes of phone time and being on hold that I will never get back.
And I also feel ripped off, to the tune of $2.50.
Perhaps I would be less sensitive to things like these if I were living "the life of leisure" and always were weeks and months ahead of my payments because I had a plentiful and reliable cash flow that exceeded my unexpected expenses by a magnitude of many.
But that is not my life, and that is also not the life of most people in this world.
Recently I was watching a YouTube clip in which some economic analyst was pointing out that close to 75% of households in this country are living some version of paycheck-to-paycheck, if you count that in the sense of at the end of each month they pretty much have ZERO leftover to put into savings or investments.
In other words, you never have the opportunity to create a safety margin or some kind of cushion between yourself and life's inevitable bullshit.
I know this often pretty much always holds true for us here in our own personal financial situation... in the sense that as a self-employed person I need to prepay estimated taxes every quarter, but much of the time I end up not sending in the tax money quarterly because it ends up having to be used for a car repair or a burst water pipe or a vet bill.
Or — like a few days ago — I thought I was on the verge of having to buy a new computer because it could no longer access the Internet, even though there was nothing wrong with our modem or router.
Again, this included time wasted with phone calls to our service provider and they had — indeed — performed some sort of network update and reboot... as a result of which my network adapter decided to take a jump off a tall cliff.
More time was wasted with a drive to the local "Geek center" where I forked over $19 for a wireless network adapter so now I'm on wifi instead of an ethernet cable.
Again, maybe I'd be feeling less grumpy about such things if I had a fat bank account and time spent working were less essential... I don't know.
What I do know is that when someone else's malfunctions cost me extra it annoys the heck out me!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Sunday!
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Created at 2024.11.23 23:18 PST
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