Collectors Are Generally Idiots

The lovely Mrs. Sneed just popped into my lair to inform me that she set a couple of bills that she meant to pay on her desk and laid something on top of them, where they remained until a moment ago. This is not a big deal since neither is due yet, its just that she has a system and she doesn't like it messed up. I am reminded about an incident that happened to me several years ago. There aren't many lapses in judgement or character that I haven't made in my life, but failing to pay my bills on time isn't one of them. I can say that I have never missed paying a bill on time, with two exceptions, neither of which were my fault. In 1995 we sold our house that was on the outskirts of the area here and moved to the center of town. Just prior to moving to this house, I took our youngest son to Mervyn's to buy him a pair of shoes. My mistake was when I accepted their offer to open an account, in order to get 10% off the price of the shoes. I saved about two bucks or so it seemed at the time. Within a week or two, our new house was ready, and we moved. I completely forgot that I opened the account with Mervyn's and charged the shoes. Mervyn's sent the bill to the old address and even though I had changed my address with my various creditors and the post office, I didn't think to tell Mervyn's and I didn't get the bill. One evening I got a telephone call and when I answered it, the voice on the line said, "Are you paying this bill or not?" I was totally mystified. She told me that she was from Mervyn's and that I owed them for some men's shoes. Blank. This person said that I had to immediately go to the store and pay the $20 bucks. I asked her to send me a bill and said that I would pay it, if it was legitimate. She agreed, grudgingly, and a few days later the bill arrived with a copy of the charge slip, which jogged my memory. No sooner than I had opened it and realized my error, I got another call from Miss Congeniality. "You need to pay this bill today." I traipsed to the store and asked for the manager so that I could let him know what I thought of his collection people. I paid the $20, closed my account and now I rarely go into Mervyn's. The swell two dollars in savings cost both me and Mervyn's a bunch of grief. The other time that I experienced the missed payment, I got a phone call on the 20th of the month from my mortgage company reporting that they didn't get my payment for the month and they wondered if there was a problem. Well, since I mailed it three weeks earlier, I guess there was a problem. The mortgage lady asked that I send a replacement check as soon as possible, if not sooner. This was in the days before the Internet, when dinosaurs still ruled the earth, so mail was the common man's only option. I sent a cashier's check, certified mail, return receipt requested. I got confirmation that they had my payment and all seemed right with the world. A few days later, I got another call from the same woman asking where the second check was. She found my delievery receipt story interesting, but not compelling and stuck fast to her story that the check never arrived. Yes, I, along with the full might of the US Postal Service, had conspired to bring down a national mortgage company screwing with their accounting. I had to send a third check to a super-secret address reserved for miscreants like me before the matter was finally put to rest. I guess my point is that it simply isn't worth it to buy stuff on credit, although with a mortgage we usually have to. No matter how diligent you think you are, things go wrong. Merle Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor