When we signed up for our internet service here, we were horrified when our first bill was significantly higher than we expected it to be. We're complete cheapskates when it comes to wi-fi and go for cheap over speed any day-- so why was our bill so expensive? It turned out that the price we'd heard quoted only worked if you got the discount they offered for enrolling in their auto-pay program. I dislike auto-pay because I'm paranoid that companies will begin overcharging me and I won't notice, so I usually resist stuff like this, but this time it was a significant savings, so we signed up.
Two days later, a thunder storm fried our router. I tried to call and work out the problem, but Craig's name was the only one on the account, so they wouldn't talk to me. And he was away at scout camp. No internet until he came back. (Once he spoke with them, they did replace the router, at least.)
So today, I open our bill from them and it's more than double what it ought to be. Because we missed last month's payment.
HOW CAN YOU MISS A PAYMENT WHEN YOU PAY AUTOMATICALLY???
I called to sort things out, but learned that I still wasn't on the account. Fuming a bit over this, I made Craig call after dinner. (I will admit to being impressed that they were still open.) The first thing he did was to finally add me to the account. About freakin' time. Then he set about figuring out what had gone wrong.
Apparently, they'd stopped accepting our particular credit card. This had all been explained in January's bill, but I never bothered to read the bill because we're enrolled in auto-pay, people!!!! So I had missed that important memo.
So to re-cap: they insisted we enroll in auto-pay, then they un-enrolled us, and then they charged us for not being enrolled and missing a payment.
And now I feel completely justified in my distrust of this stuff.
End of rant.
2 comments:
This makes me laugh because otherwise I could only scream. I had an autopsy bill once that didn't get paid because something was wrong with the credit card I used, but nobody ever bothered to tell me so it just didn't get paid month after month. It got fairly serious. Another hospital bill I had changed cost for no apparent reason so instead of a 12 month plan it ended up being 18 months. I didn't complain because the bill was lower per month, but seriously auto pays are hassles.
We had trouble with auto-pay recently too. And on e of those things of you have to be signed up to get the discount, and then it didn't go through. Which we didn't find out until halfway through the next one. Good thing Kyle gets to deal with that stuff.
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