so I’m patiently waiting in line at the department store 10 minutes or so, when the lady in front of me tells me she was in line 15 minutes before I even got there. I notice she has nothing to buy in her hands. she drove to the mall and waited 25 minutes in line so she could pay her store charge card bill.
…with a check that she had to dig out of the bottom of her ginormous purse AFTER the 25 minute wait. :rolleyes: And after she tells the clerk she has a debit card but knows the store won’t accept a debit card.
say what? do people really still have debit cards that are not associated with MasterCard or Visa? do people who wear hundred dollar jeans still really not have internet access?
I will gladly let Comcast continue to rob me blind if it means never having to wait in line to write a check to pay my bills.
My wife once had a kohls card. They required you to use the card to get their sale prices and they made it difficult to pay online. Many many many times she ran out of the house after the kids were in bed because “I have to pay my kohls card it’s due tomorrow and the web site has a 4 day delay to apply the payment and it wasn’t working earlier in the week and there’s a big late fee so I have to pay in the store and they’re closing soon!” Exactly as planned, she would run in to pay the balance at customer service desk in the very far back corner of the store and see some thigs she just had to have and run up a new balance on her way back out.
I don’t know if your department store in question is kohls, but that business model sure seems to suit them just fine.
My brother and sister-in-law do this all the time. More than once I’ve called my brother about something to find that he’s running around town paying bills, mostly utility and service bills.
I have no clue why they do this. As far as I can tell, they have plenty of money, so I don’t think that’s it. Maybe they’re just unorganized and don’t realize they’re due until the day they’re due? Who knows. All I know is that one of the best things in my life has been auto-pay. I simply don’t worry about bills anymore, they get paid on time because I have every one of them set up with auto-pay.
I know a couple of people who still pay their bills in person.
I don’t get it but they do.
I had one bill I paid in person because it was that or mail it in. After a payment got lost in the mail one time, I took the 5 minutes to run there and pay it myself each month. Cheaper and easier than paying the late charge and putting a stop payment on a check.
I pay, ironicly, my comcast bill in person. The account is in my husband’s name and his computer died a while ago. He has a smart phone now and doesn’t need the desk top. He could make it ok for me to pay it on line, but he just hasn’t. He likes the drive, while I hate sitting in their lobby, I’m usually there with a bunch of others who do the same.
I pay all my bills online or in person. I rarely write checks, since hubby thinks he’s a millionaire when, in fact, we’re barely thousandaires, so he tends to overdraw the account. The CU doesn’t charge for debit card overages, but they do for check overdrafts.
If I can’t pay it via my bank’s payment service then it doesn’t get paid. I sit down once a month, go to one website and pay them all at once. If I owe a particular person and I’m not going to see them anytime some, they better accept Paypal or they can just wait. I’ll be go to hell if I’m getting in the car to pay anyone.
I spent some time with my parents at Christmas, and one of the errands I ran with them was going to Kohls with my mother to pay her store account. (Personally, I’m not willing to accumulate a bunch of store cards just to get a discount; I’m happy to have just one credit card in my wallet.)
My father used to pay bills in person, back in the 1970s and 1980s, because he’d delay paying the bill until the last day it was due and he could save the cost of a stamp by doing so. Now he pays almost all bills online. Still, they’ve had the same checking account at the same local bank for over forty years, so his check numbers are well into the thousands; I think he’s at 4,000-something. On the other hand, I’ve had this checking account for about 17 years but always pay online when possible, and I’m still using the first check order.
I think she might have had a shopping emergency ;). Kohls has changed their log-in requirements in the past year or two, but I’ve never heard of them taking 4 days to apply payment. If that were the case I would have one bill I paid in person.
Mine too. Waited all week for Saturdays and half of them turned out to be “bill paying day.” Spent the whole damn day in the backseat while he ran in and out of banks, utility companies, stores, wherever.
Which is probably why I avoid it like the plague today!
My local utilities (gas, electric, phone) closed their bill collection window over 15 years ago. I used to pay my bills in person at their drive up. Water still has a drive up. I went by there a week ago and dropped a payment in their night deposit box. That was the first time in years. I’d forgotten to mail it early enough and didn’t want to risk it being late.
I normally mail my utility bills. It costs $2.95 each to pay by automated phone or web. :mad: What good is technology when they screw you over like that? We had free drive up service to pay bills for decades. It gets replaced by automated phone or web and they dare charge us $2.95? :dubious: WTF? The utilities fire their cashiers and save money, but now we get charged?
DirecTV to their credit doesn’t charge to pay by automated phone.
I assume that your utility companies charge $2.95 if you pay the bill from their websites. That’s a rip-off, of course, but can you pay these bills from your bank’s website without incurring a charge?
Working in customer service for a large megabank it amazed me how attached people could get to their payment methods. Some clients would absolutely insist on paying their credit card bill in person at the banking center at the last mintute, then whenever their due date fell on a weekend or public holiday expect to be able to pay the next day & not get a late fee. :rolleyes: It doesn’t work that way. Federal law requires that the due date be the same every month. And heaven forbid you suggest they pay the bill before it’s due, or online/by phone (both free & 24/7 & credited the same day). Some people, especially seniors, would get really hostile if you suggested that. Granted to do pay by phone or online you did need a checking account; I once had a client who was pissed off that I couldn’t take a payment from a savings account over the phone (she normally sent money orders in the mail).
Maybe. I’m not set up for online banking. I worry too much about getting my password stolen. There’s so many keyloggers and viruses these days. I just don’t want to risk online banking. Even paypal worries me and I change that password every three months.
I still have one account I pay in person some times. My charge at the local hardware store is a personal charge. I go in pick up stuff. The owner or his son asks if they should put it on account and I usually have them do so. I don’t even sign for it. Once a month I get a bill. If I happen to be going there, and I have a bill, I’ll write a check and give it to them.
I am this kind of disorganized, and it plagues me. I am afraid to put everything on auto-pay because I live close enough to the bone that some months I need more control of who gets what when.
I now have reminders set up in google calendar so I don’t have the panicky rush that I used to, but even before that I was already paying online.
I don’t pay bills in person, but I do pay by check, writing them out and putting them in the mail. The only two bills I pay by auto-pay is my home security and my IRA contribution, because it’s a requirement.
I resisted autopay for a very long time, but once I dipped a toe in, I never looked back. It does take some planning and I’m fortunate enough to be able to leave a cushion of money untouched in a linked savings account just in case I miscalculate. Back in the day, I wouldn’t have been able to do that, and I’d have been a bit more afraid to pay bills automatically. I save a whole lot of money this way in the long run, because although I’m fairly good about things, when I had to write out checks and send them in, I’d end up sending a payment in late at least a couple of times a year, and I hate paying late fees.
I’m pretty sure the utilities use a third party processor for electronic bill pay that charges them per transaction so they’re just passing the fee along.
I’ve paid the electric bill in person a few times. Their main office is just around the corner from where I work and sometimes it’s just easier to walk over with a check than mail it in.
Waited all week for Saturdays and half of them turned out to be “bill paying day.” Spent the whole damn day in the backseat while he ran in and out of banks, utility companies, stores, wherever.