Wednesday, September 03, 2008

AHA!

Not the greatest AHA moment, but one none-the-less. I called my bank today and put stop payments on the 4 months worth of checks that I've sent to the gas company that haven't been cashed. My account was credited. Then I called the gas company after my AHA moment. I dug up the paper bill which says I owe an extravagant amount of money for an empty house including 4 late payment charges and realized that online banking has its faults. You see, I don't generally even LOOK at the paper bills. Instead I look at my account online and go over to my bank page and hit 'send'. The downfall would be that the gas company made notification in the PAPER bill and not the ONLINE bill that their billing address had been changed. Yeah, not a good thing. They'd changed the address on their site, but hadn't put out any "hey stupid look" signs or e-mails (since this was part of my registration to view my account online) to say that I should change the address I send payments to. Since online bill pay is so easy with my bank I just type in the amount due for each bill and at the end hit the button and it automatically is sent to the address that I have on file. So not one or two months of not being applied to my account, but 4 months now (and in the midst of life I have NO IDEA why I hadn't noticed something like a different PO BOX...)

Anyway, after talking to a man that doesn't speak English and him asking me why I didn't change my billing address with them if it's a problem (um... it wasn't MY BILLING address that changed... it was THEIRS) he finally transferred me to an 'escalation manager'. Wow, didn't know we'd escalated! I was simply asking that the late charges be removed since there wasn't notification online that the address of their company had changed. She finally understood what I was talking about and said there was a slip in the paper bill and I explained that I don't use a paper bill to pay, I use their online system and have for years without a problem. Unfortunately, she says she could only remove one late payment fee, so $5 less it is... I guess that's something though. Anyway, I now have the account changed in my banking and thankfully I should only have to ever pay ONE MORE BILL to this company because it's servicing our other house which we should close on by the end of the month. $123.60 has now been sent to the NEW billing address, including $15 in late payment fees.

Now to call back Medicaid. I got my first formal denial today. We have too many assets. Hmm...

2 comments:

  1. Assets, one place will say you have to many then the other says not enough...sigh. It's like a board game where the rules are made up as you go. Your in my prayers, your family is beautiful.

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  2. Ok this was the last post that I have read of your since my electricity went out Monday, So you get my comment on here LOL. I'm so glad the IEP meeting went well the other day. As far as not being able to get SSI because too many assets, I think that stinks!! W e too have gone through the same thing. My parent "donated" property (23 acres) to me years ago and My husband and I do not live on it, nor do we plan on selling it ever. It's been in the family for 50+ years and want to save it for our kids. The SSI lady told me that we could just sell the property and then we still couldn't get SSI b/c we would have to tell them what we spent that money on....nice huh? I don't want the money for me to blow, but like you know every thing costs so much more with our kids with special needs. I don't know an easy answer and apparently ther isn't one. Sorry th is ws so long. Have a great day!

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