I've been paying my bills for a long time now. It keeps people from getting mad at me.
Most times, I use my electronic checking account. My bank is PNC, and their web billpaying service is very good. Has a payment-delivery guarantee that's so good, its scary. They guarantee your payment will be there on time, or they eat your late fees. And they honor it.
But sometimes I use a bill-paying service. Like Checkfree.
I stumbled onto this outfit a loooong time back, thanks to my utility bills.
My electric company is PECO. An Excelon Company. Couple of years ago, they were in the throes of the whole get-your-customers-to-take-their-bills-electronically craze. Wherein they convince you to let them stop mailing you paper bills, thus transferring the cost of printing and postage from them to you. While not letting their customers have any chargeback rights.
Well, okay. They didn't transfer the cost of postage.
Just printing.
Anyway, this was also back in the days when, if PNC couldn't make an electronic transfer to a company you set up in your checking payment program, they'd have to mail em a paper draft. For some odd reason, PECO was, at the time, receiving drafts.
So when I get the PECO invitation I think, "Hmmmm." And go check it out.
PECO'd partnered with Checkfree for this. You'd sign up with PECO for the billpaying service, and their website in turn routed you to Checkfree, where you had to sign up for a Checkfree account. Then you'd link the two.
You can see the issue. Why even bother with a PECO signup when a Checkfree account will accomplish the same thing? So I bailed on the PECO aspect, and went right into Checkfree.
Only to find that I still ended up signing away my paper bill when i completed my Checkfree signup.
Ok.
Live and learn.
Like PECO. Because within two months, their electronic billpay signups were no longer sending you to the Checkfree site, but wanted you to redo the whole thing with another billpaying firm.
No thank you. I kept Checkfree. Their structure looked remarkably like the way PNC was paying things, even down to the security confirmation codes at the end of each transaction.
My Verizon bill is $15. Taxes included. And, about a month after I signed up for Checkfree, I put the Verizon account on it, too.
My family lives on cell phones, not land lines. I've completely cut the house phone down, down to the barest essential I could convince Verizon to sell me. No long distance. No intralata. Local calling to exactly one zone. People call us on the land line and talk to an answering machine that I check once a week, or I call 800 numbers, and that's it. Emergency only, basically. For when the cell networks have had a tower meltdown. With a stripped down bill like that, who needed the paper bill?
Verizon and I have gotten along just fine these past couple of years. Each month I Checkfree em $15, and each month they leave me a dial tone.
Until this month.
This month, I log onto Checkfree, and upon choosing to View My Bill, I get a Brick Wall Screen--originating from the Verizon site. Citing regulations that went into effect August 2007, Verizon says I now have to register with and sign in to the Verizon website in order to view the bill that I agreed should be placed into the delivery custody of CheckFree.
Right now, Checkfree is showing me the amount due, but detail? Nuh uh. Verizon was not going to let me see my bill, unless I registered with them.
Okay. Let's all look at our calendars together, shall we?
April.
2008.
August.
2007.
Well, okay. They both begin with "A". I can see where that would confuse things a bit.
I should be upset because I can't get at my bill. I either give Verizon my email address so they can send me a temporary password, or I have to wait 5 snaildays to get my password by USPS. That's it. Those are the only two ways I can view the bill I gave them permission to provide me electronically two years ago.
But, in my time as a customer I've grown numb to Verizon behaving this way. I'm more annoyed that they're citing regulations from the middle of last year.
I can't help but feel like there's a twist in here, somewhere. Like I'm looking at a reflection in a funhouse mirror and not seeing the warp.