Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Convenience?
I'm slowly and reluctantly sliding away from the old way of paying bills. A couple months ago I switched CenturyLink from mail to online payment. Their system messed up and submitted both types of bill for the previous month, so I paid both ways. Better to get ahead than behind.
But their system continues to mess up. Their programmers don't know how to handle 'ahead'. When the current bill has already been paid by previous overpays, the normal procedure would be to send a bill that indicates clearly "No need to pay this month" or some such phrasing.
The new online bill, after getting through the security questions:
Well then, which amount should I pay? $Temporarily.Unavailable or $0.00? In either case there will be a $3.50 fee for using a credit card. It's ALMOST enough to make me switch back to paper. The only holdback is that their system will inevitably screw up even worse on the transition.
Systems should be able to handle common situations. Prepaying is not a wild outlier like paying in barleycorns or Klingon Darsek.
Well then, which amount should I pay? $Temporarily.Unavailable or $0.00? In either case there will be a $3.50 fee for using a credit card. It's ALMOST enough to make me switch back to paper. The only holdback is that their system will inevitably screw up even worse on the transition.
Systems should be able to handle common situations. Prepaying is not a wild outlier like paying in barleycorns or Klingon Darsek.
Labels: coot-proofing
¶ 2:41 AM
