Sat, Apr 10, 2010
Post Office Avoidance
Posted to Miscellaneous category
Why the post office is dying...
I pay almost all of my bills on-line. The exceptions are miscellaneous things like some magazine subscriptions, and the trash and bottled-water companies, whose on-line payment mechanisms are primitive. Though I've actually been making phone payments to the water and trash companies as often as not in recent months.
I do not have any accounts set to autopsy except a transfer to my investment account that means savings come out first thing every month. Bills get paid with me looking at the bills and balances in the various accounts and explicitly choosing when the money gets transferred. I pay most of my bills on paydays or as soon afterward as the bill arrives, and most automated payments won't synchronize with biweekly paychecks.
This month I had a CD that was going to roll over into basically no interest, so I decided to use the money to pay down credit cards. I put a chunk of it into the Visa I have through the same credit union, Elevations, that held the CD. That was a normal on-line transaction.
I wanted the rest of the money to go toward paying down a Visa at my other credit union, Bellco, which has a branch near my business's office, 25 minutes away from my house, but I am working from home these days and had no other errands to run in that direction.
Transferring the money on-line is possible, but carries a fee. It was also surprisingly slow the last time I tried it, though that was a few years ago and things may have improved.
I still get paper bills and statements for most of my accounts -- Elevations, with the newest accounts, is the exception in being all electronic. The paper statement for the Bellco Visa card came in at about the time the CD matured at Elevations, so I decided to write a paper check for the payment.
I think that is likely to be the last check I write for a major bill that could affect my credit rating. Next year I will even see if there is an on-line option for paying my property taxes.
I mailed the check last Saturday, seven days ago. As of this morning, seven days later, neither of the on-line balances (checking account at Elevations, Visa account at Bellco) reflects the transaction. Even allowing for the fact that the payment address for Bellco Visa is in Florida (which seems odd for a Colorado credit union) this seems excessively slow.
I had already made an on-line payment for the month for the Bellco Visa -- and the due date is not until the 22nd in any case -- but if this was my regular monthly payment that I had mailed one full week before the due date, I would be screwed at this point.
This delay is probably not the post office's fault: I was underwhelmed by Bellco's handling of the car loan and home equity loan I had with them a few years ago. Credit unions are supposed to be less rapacious than commercial banks, but Bellco seems to share the bankers' tendency toward 'mistakes' and delays that will allow them to rack up fees. They are advertising loans constantly on the radio these days, which I can't help thinking is a bad sign.
But I am being trained very thoroughly to avoid entrusting my finances to the post office and paper payments. The forever stamps I bought at Costco last year are going to last a loooong time at this rate.