Sunday, November 13, 2016
Paper again again
In the last year I've been sliding toward online payments for utilities and such. It's time to slide back to plain old paper checks in plain old envelopes. Online systems are getting LESS useful and LESS reliable.
This morning Comcast sent its monthly email with the monthly bill. I tried to pay it in the usual online direct-bank way, but found that the bank's website is "down for repairs" with no definite date of return. The payment may have gone through, or may have disappeared into bit hell, or may have been nabbed by the hacker who is DDOSing the bank's website. No way to tell.
Online payment tends to be an instantaneous one-time transaction. If it fails there's no way to wait and repeat.
Plain old paper doesn't have this problem. I write the check and put the envelope in the mailbox. The check goes physically to the company that sent the statement. THEY have the responsibility of dealing with the bank, and THEY can wait until the bank is working. There's no doubt that MY part of the transaction was completed correctly. Conversely, if I fail to send a check, there's no doubt that MY part of the transaction was bad.
Just as with voting, paper wins. 
Labels: Metrology, Patient things
¶ 10:45 AM
