IN THE INTEREST OF INTEREST

How do you manage your bills?

Are you a train wreck? Are you rigid? Do you pay your bills on time? Do you blame everyone but yourself for your life’s woes?

Okay I don’t really expect you to answer that on here but I have to wonder.

We often get calls at my work from people who want us to take the interest charges off their bills. They have a variety of reasons as to why they are not responsible for the charges to their accounts.

• I didn’t get the bill (we sent it to the address on file month after month and you knew you were using something you have to pay for)
• I haven’t lived there in 2 years (you didn’t give us a new address. YOu used our service and never questioned why you were no longer getting a statement?)
• I paid my bill (yes you did but it was due on June 1st and you paid it in October)
• They opted to manage their accounts online to no longer get a paper statement yet have never logged into their accounts to check their bills.
• They have put a credit card on file to pay their accounts automatically but it has expired or declined. (we have automated phone calls that go out to warn you of an expiring credit card a month ahead of time and also an automated call if your card doesn’t go through. This caller will leave a message if it gets an answering machine)
• They have more than one account with us and are paying the wrong account even though there is a clear account # on the statement. In this case we do reverse the interest charges since we did have their money. Funny thing is they get mad at us because they are paying the wrong account often a spouses account.
• Did we actually make an error? Many apologies and let us remove those interest charges right away.

We are often talking about a very small amount but rather than accepting that they are not paying their bills on time they will fight to the finish.

Why don’t we reverse it as a goodwill gesture you ask? The odd time we do but we pay interest on the money our company owes, and since it is a substantial amount for a very, very large project we do not have the luxury of not collecting interest on overdue amounts.

So the next time you have an interest charge on one of your bills you may want to look at the real reason why and just chalk it up to experience and pay it.

Whew…….I feel better now.