there's no mechanism to return your money to your account when a czech is sufficiently outstanding.
My bank does this. I do almost all my banking electronically. It's great.
As far as I know, there's no mechanism to return your money to your account when a czech is sufficiently outstanding.
Should be. Had a similar problem couple years ago when my landlord didn't receive/misplaced the autopay check. I called the bank, they confirmed that it hadn't cleared, canceled it and credited my account, and I wrote a regular check. Didn't charge me a stop-payment fee, I don't think, and this was a matter of a week or two, certainly not past the expiration date. Wasn't Bank of America, though.
I have an account with Bank of America, because they have so many ATMs.
I also have an ING direct account, but depositing money in it is a pain unless you do it by direct deposit. Wire transfers from ING to another bank are free, but B of A charges to send them.
I really dislike Bank of America, but my local branch is pretty good. I hate that I can't get them to stop asking me if I want to sign up for their Keep the Change program. I say "No" once, and the teller asks me another 2 times--even after I say that I want to be able to reconcile my accounts, and I keep my savings elsewhere.
I wish that I could do that with an FSA, so you wouldn't have to submit it for reimbursement. They have a credit card, but my psychiatrist's private practice is only part-time, so he's not set up to bill insurance, much less take a credit card.
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I'm home sick today. I should set up a spreadsheet to calculate my anticipated healthcare expenses for next year, but that seems like too much work.
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Virtually all* of my bills are set for autopay by credit card, and then I pay those via online transfer from my checking account. The idea of actual paper checks being sent for these things seems kind of inefficient.
* Except for Rory's child-care program. Which I therefore always forget. And now just remembered. Time to go pay online!
BillPay has a 3-month expiration date. If the check's not cashed by then, it's cancelled and the money goes back in your account. At least, that's my bank's version.
I still pay all of our bills by old-school paper checks. I suppose it is just inertia and I have started to switch a bit since T-Mobile now wants $1.50 to send me a paper bill.
I am going to get in before any of the European commenters to say "You people still use paper checks? How sad and primitive."
Personally I only use between four and five paper checks per month.
8: Yes, those Europeans and their fancy debit cards.
"I am going to get in before any of the European commenters to say "You people still use paper checks? How sad and primitive.""
That'll be me. Do you not have direct debit over there?
10.2: Yes, we have direct debit. But why should I figure out a new system (new to me) to make sure the electric company gets my money quicker.
Keep the change is a huge scam designed to trick people into overdrawing their account so they can charge you $35 per occurrence. You mean you had $100 in your account and charged $77.05, $10.15, and $12.10, which adds up to $99.30? Sorry, we actually took $102 out of your account, that will be $35 please. But don't worry, you saved $2.70 toward retirement! DO NOT WANT.
(Yeah yeah, you shouldn't be cutting your account so close, but if you charge a whole lot of small things per month like they encourage- you could get an extra $3.50 in savings match!- it can add up to many dollars they automatically move out.)
In the free-market paradise of the US we have a deep fear of entering into situations by which a corporation takes money from our checking account at regular intervals, since said corporations have a tendency to refuse to stop doing so unless asked repeatedly in special mystical ways.
What 12 said. Also, it's a scam that they call it "saving" -- it's just transferring.
I wonder how many years of using "Keep the Change" it would take to accumulate what I lost in B of A stock. But at least the brokers at Merrill didn't have to go without their bonus.
13: Yes, that also. Did you know that MacAfee won't let you stop auto-renewal without calling them and waiting for a rep? But apparently you can sign-up for it without really knowing you did.
11 - It's hardly figuring out a system, it's just filling in a form. And it's worth it for all the time it saves you, surely. I never have to think about this stuff.
13 - I can cancel any of my DDs via my internet banking.
Although I can only cancel my DVD rental thing by phoning them up. But that's a 'recurring visa payment' not a DD and my own stupid fault for doing it in the first place.
Any innovation in banking should be assumed to be a scam until proven otherwise, right?
That sounds like the talk of someone who lives in a place where government regulations pervert the paradisaical relationship between a monopoly and a customer, Asilon.
As has been discussed here at length before, I think, for many of us the one reason we have to keep checks around is to pay rent. I had auto-billing set up with my landlord for a while, but they could only arrange to take a fixed payment every month, and my bill includes rent + utilities, so in months when the utilities would fluctuate upward, I would have to write them a check for the difference anyway. Annoying! Now the apartment complex got sold to some other landlord, who is even more incompetent about managing the billing.
There's like a century of legal protections to check writers and payees, the magic phrase is commercial paper. As far as I can tell, the point of electronic transactions is to roll these protections back so that the bank keeps the money in case of error, and while fraud is being proven to the bank's satisfaction, in the name of efficiency.
Cashed used to be a slang word for depleted or exhausted. Cashed Czech was a descriptive phrase back then.
Also, I just yesterday took a huge bundle of paper checks to someone's house for PTA purposes. It was eye-opening to me that a few families used money orders.
Also also, no-one except me goes in for sad clown or fluffy kitten or elvis in the diner checks. I love those things.
Cashed used to be a slang word for depleted or exhausted.
Still is -- or am I superannuated? I say it about things like bottles of wine and such.
Also also, no-one except me goes in for sad clown or fluffy kitten or elvis in the diner checks. I love those things.
I've got frosted roses on mine.
Oh, not diner checks. On my personal checks.
As Asilon says, direct debits are cancellable at your end, not the company's (at least in the UK). And often you get a discount on your bill if you pay that way, so it's worth "learning a new system" even beyond the lack of hassle. I'm so absent minded I might even do it if it cost more, but I actually save about a tenner or so a month using it.
As for variable bills, you can either do it through something like the "recurring visa payment" mentioned above, or, using direct debit, the utility estimates your average bill and when the accumulated differences in the actual bills reaches a certain point you get a further debit or credit.
I say it about things like bottles of wine and such.
I thought it mostly applied to bowls.
28 is how it works in my idiolect as well.
I come here to find out what the kids are saying since I cannot see the rest of you. Google doesn't turn up much for cashed in casual writing after excluding checks; "cashed out" is common as a synonym for sold out. There's some usage clearly pot-related, not much else. Are you 37-43?
I hate BOA and all the other banks so much that even though I'm dissatisfied with the electronic banking setup at my current bank (small, keeps the money in the community through small business and even micro business loans focusing on urban development), there isn't a chance in hell I'd switch. They're all evil, every last fucking one of them (not that local branches can't be OK, but the evil is set as corporate policy, not by the branch manager).
Here electronic checks are cancellable on your end. Direct Debits are not. People often have problems when they want to quit a gym with the gym continuing to charge them.
That sucks. I probably wouldn't do it if that were the case here.
Yes, you can cancel direct debits and standing orders by yourself - the recipient can send you plaintive letters, but it can't get into your account and take the money just because it feels it should be able to do so.
I think I've written about four or five čeks in the last year and a half.
Direct Debits are not. People often have problems when they want to quit a gym with the gym continuing to charge them.
That's insane. You should be able to stop your bank from paying out your money to people to whom you do not want it to be paid.
You should be able to stop your bank from paying out your money to people to whom you do not want it to be paid.
Silly ajay, valuing the rights of individuals over those of corporations. You'd never make it as an American.
When I was in day camp they had an award for every kid and I got the "designer check award" because my mom paid with a fancy picture check before such things were popular (1984).
I only use direct debit for things that 1) Don't take credit cards and 2) I will never stop using. Currently this is only gas and electric bills, everything else is autopay with credit card. The protections on credit cards are much greater than debit cards or direct debit- if you report a fraudulent or disputed charge on the former, it is immediately credited and the onus is on the merchant to prove the charge.
I use credit cards for everything I can as well. I'm going to pay the YMCA this month either way, I might as well get the frequent flyer points on my credit card for it.
The fine print on debit card agreements say that it causes impotence if you use it to buy something that costs less than $10 bucks when somebody else is in line behind you.
40- Unpossible! The commercials show the evil slow person as the one who pays with cash or check, the debit carders are the smooth dancing people!
41: Everyone involved in those commercials had their car keyed.
37: amazing. So if the merchant doesn't want to cancel the direct debit, there's nothing you can do - short of, what, suing him? If you write to the bank and say "I signed up for a magazine subscription by DD, and the magazine stopped publishing two months ago; please cancel my DD" the bank would say "No, get stuffed, he's entitled to take the money every month as long as he likes, and we'll help him do it"?
The free market means those things can't happen, ajay. Surely nobody would do business with a firm that behaved like that!
What if you emptied all the money out of your account and tried to close it? The bank would presumably keep it open and keep racking up an overdraft for you as the DD kept being paid?
I'm amazed you guys aren't angrier with your banks, to be honest. Over here we drove the CEO of one of them into hiding out of fear for his personal safety. (Seriously.)
43, 45: I don't think it is quite that bad, but I've never used it for anything but a student loan (you get a .25% rate cut).
I had an account that was closed, I took my money out, balance of 0. Then someone tried to debit it for $x, which reopened the account, gave it a balance of -$x, and charged an overdraft fee of $29. Final balance: -$(x+29). I got that shit corrected after some serious bitching- "I don't own the fucking account any more. If you paid someone out of a closed account, that's your goddamn problem."
43
amazing. So if the merchant doesn't want to cancel the direct debit, there's nothing you can do - short of, what, suing him? If you write to the bank and say "I signed up for a magazine subscription by DD, and the magazine stopped publishing two months ago; please cancel my DD" the bank would say "No, get stuffed, he's entitled to take the money every month as long as he likes, and we'll help him do it"?
I am pretty sure you could cancel it, it is just a big pain.
47: so, in fact, contra 46, it is exactly that bad.
Huh, I'm surprised to see all the hate on the BOA Keep the Change program. I use Wachovia's equivalent plan, which for every ATM transaction dumps a dollar from checking into a higher yield savings account (not a whole lot higher, but higher than a normal savings rate, which is currently shite). You can also deposit up to $100 per month into this higher yield account, on an automatic rolling basis.
I've moved a rather good bit of money over there without even thinking of it, and I'm quite pleased with the service.
(I kind of figure I could probably be doing more profitable things with that money, but I'm not.)
which for every ATM transaction s/b which for every debit card transaction
I don't trust banks not to just keep debiting and debiting. Sign up once and it's impossible to get them to stop.
In general, I don't like paying bills online because many of them seem to require you to set up an account and password. Why would I want to set up seven more accounts and passwords to pay my telephone, cell phone, electric, gas, water, and other companies?
Also, debits leave your account immediately. For deposits, they keep making up crazy rules so that if you're putting money in, it will only get credited on the first Monday after the first Tuesday after the full moon and at least five days after you first requested it. Bah.
(Can you tell I just followed up on an action alert from one of the PIRGs regarding consumer financial issues? Go, Elizabeth Warren! Although I'm at work and can't watch that particular clip.)
In general, I don't like paying bills online because many of them seem to require you to set up an account and password. Why would I want to set up seven more accounts and passwords to pay my telephone, cell phone, electric, gas, water, and other companies?
That's why doing it out of your bank is nice. I just log in to my bank, and I can access everything. Also, there is no debit from the other company that would be hard to cancel; BoA doesn't have a stake in making it hard to cancel my outside accounts.
I use US Bank online banking, which winds up sending a paper check for me in many cases. I put the charities in recurring payments, but I like to do the bills myself. I'm a bit more conscious of money flying out that way.
And yet, various outfits still send me mailing labels. Is there somewhere I can sign up for the Stop- sending- me- mailing- labels List? I don't mail!
That's why doing it out of your bank is nice.
Except for the times they screw up, don't send the payment on time, and you get slammed for not making your due date on the bill.
Personally, while I'm aware of the pitfalls of direct debit, I'm also (or have been in the past) sufficiently disorganized that it's preferable to constantly going delinquent on my accounts. (One of the joys of sorting through old papers from the last time I moved was finding all the past due notices from previous creditors. I really don't want to go through that again.)
I just went to a focus group last week held by the bank we bank with at my job. It's a small-to-medium local bank that's owned by a non-profit (just like Pabst!) and they give most of their pre-tax profits to other non-profits. We've had a fairly good experience so far, but some of the other people there had terrible horror stories. It was enlightening. The focus of the focus group was on branding, so we looked at stupid ads. One of the other 2 people who was mostly satisfied had brought in a flier from the teller line that said they were going to start charging non-account holders $5 and $10 for cashing a check. So yeah, they're all evil.
Checks should be abolished, anyway. They waste ridiculous amounts of time and energy. But, as pointed out above, there would need to be concurrent reform of consumer protection statutes for that to be reasonable.
Also, abolish pennies now! End negative seigneurage!
Also, abolish pennies now!
My understanding is that the lawmakers from the Land of Lincoln always opposes this one, so I wouldn't expect it to pass under Barry O.'s watch.
57: How about a new dollar coin with Lincoln on it and dumping the paper dollar also?
58: Anytime any currency changes come up, a bunch of GOPers clamor for the Reagan dime, so I think it's just easier to do nothing.
I could get behind a Reagan $3 bill, come to think of it.
59: Just remind them that Lincoln was a Republican ,and that the Democrats control Congress and the White House and that should clear that obstacle. I think the paper supplier is probably the bigger headache. I always thought Sen. Kennedy was the bigger road block there.
I'm not sure why, but I'd like to be able to buy a beer with pocket change.
(Without the bartender thinking I've been begging change to buy it.)
59: Nancy has already made it clear that that would not please her in the slightest, as RWR thought FDR was a great president.
How about we just get rid of all of the politicians on the currency? Or at least require them to be dead for 100 years first? I'd be OK with taking FDR off the dime for a while, especially if DCA could go back to its old name in exchange.
Related: the Robert C. Byrd State of West Virginia needs to stand up a renaming task force as soon as their senior Senator shuffles off. Our guy isn't perfect, but he stays away from building monuments to himself.
Used to be we had pictures of Liberty on the money. Now we've got politicians. Nice priorities there...
64: WV: We're poorer than PA, but at least our roads don't suck.
DCA could go back to its old name in exchange
The funny thing is that, in my experience, the only people that don't still call it "National" are (a) Republicans and/or (b) out-of-towners. So it's sort of a useful tell.
67: A friend of ours who's a career federal employee in the DC area calls it "Reagan". Not sure how Republican he is, but it grates.
Penny needs to become worth 5 cents. Nickel to be abolished as it now costs more than $.05 to make, just like pennies cost more than $.01.
I'm looking forward to using the vending machines at the movie theater aagin this weekend -it's the only place I've ever seen the James K. Polk dollar coins. Napoleon of the Stump!
I think we should call it PATCO national airport.
69: If you like dollar coins, buy your stamps from Post Office vending machines. That's where I get mine.
If you like dollar coins, buy your stamps from Post Office vending machines. move to Canada.
Fucking commies. If God had meant for money to be made of metal, He'd have put it in the ground for us to dig up.
By implying mutual exclusivity, the post title betrays a certain lack of familiarity with business fundamentals.
It would be nice if we could trade Thurgood Marshall BWI airport back for Regan National, so they could both go back to their true names. I don't think Republicans would make the trade yet; maybe we need to hold out a little longer so we can also trade them Al Sharpton Newark airport.
Bimetallic coinage, like Europe or Mexico. With the outer band made of Osmium, Iridium, or Yttrium, core silver, gold, or platinum.
maybe we need to hold out a little longer so we can also trade them Al Sharpton Newark airport.
Newark would never name anything after Al Sharpton. Now Sharpe James . . .
I could actually see Chicago Midway becoming Chicago BHO Midway....
For you (me?) superior Europeans out there, we've had online checking and banking since at least '95, which is when I signed up for the Citi version. Except it was on a proprietary network rather than on the internet.
As far as getting rid of those permanent draws on your account, a threat to call the regulatory authorities helps, plus never doing autopay. I had a friendly phone company which misbilled me significantly in my favour, not charging me for local service for six months, then discovered the mistake a year later. I paid up, and they promptly added the sum to what I owed them and disconnected me for not paying my bill. Hours of argument and muzak later, I got them to agree to fix the problem... and the same thing happened. This got repeated a few more times, with me constantly losing my phone service and eventually running up my bill to scary amounts (doubling adds up fast). They also told me they'd cancel my number and do their best not to allow me to get phone service from anyone else. What eventually worked was a threat to call the NYC utility commission and a mention that I'd kept all the bills. No I'm not organized, but being a slob who hates cleaning up can come in useful at times.
77: Just 15 minutes down 55 St. from the university that will surely have his papers and pres. library (unless he mixes it up and gives them to a HBC).
I autopay recurring bills with the credit card, then pay the credit card electronically. I do one-time payments out of the checking account if I need to. Bank of America has a bunch of agreements that make it possible to pay bills through their system using a dropdown menu/list instead of having to create usernames elsewhere, but I don't use it.
Up here I don't have a credit card or paper checks, which makes certain things more expensive when credit is the only way to pay remotely, because I pay a currency fee for the American card. However, the fine print on the credit card application at the bank I'm using up here says they treat bill payments as cash advances. So that pushes people into direct debit, I assume.
I don't know the debit rules here; I've just done one-time payments that way (mainly tuition). I think I have a stable enough address now to request paper checks. I've been paying rent in cash, but I'm not so comfortable just sliding an envelope under the door upstairs (landlord lives above; I'm in a basement apartment).
To cancel Verizon in the states I had to call someone at their office - the word cancel doesn't appear anywhere on the information they provided me about my account (except with respect to termination fees) or on the how to do things online sections of their website - who then told me that I couldn't pay my final bill online (roaming fees beyond the regular plan rate) because they'd shut me out of the system when my contract ended. I had the bill sent to my parents address on the theory that it would get there sooner and they could pay it more easily and then I would reimburse them. After almost two weeks of waiting, it still hadn't reached them, so I tried online and found the bill in pdf. It appeared possible to pay it online, but without the usual invoice system I was used to, I decided it would be safer not to send money to what was potentially a black hole. So I printed the payment stub and wrote a check. To make sure it arrived on time I had to pay extra on top of the basic international postage rate. But the bill was paid yesterday, two days before it was due, so that's good.
77, 79: What are we, chopped liver? HNL isn't even named for anything but the town, and but for the University of Hawaii BHO wouldn't even exist.
his papers and pres. library (unless he mixes it up and gives them to a HBC).
Or if the presidential library system, which has all sorts of problems, is reformed.
the presidential library system, which has all sorts of problems
Can you elaborate? I've just never heard this complaint before. (Actually, I've never really heard any praise for a presidential library either.)
Another UK devotee of Direct Debit here: I am absent-minded and the best of times, and detest routine -- my work comes in bursts of 3or4 month extreme intensity followed by 4or3 month slacktimes -- and DDs are the only way I could possibly get by without worse account management probs than I already have. As well as all the bonuses listed there's this: about 11 months ago a client screwed up payment bad enough that my account went too far into the red during busytime -- and my various DDs did get cut off (this was my fault as I wasn't then opening letters -- I do this in bursts too) (had I been, a single phonecall would have staved off the cascade).
Anyway I turned all the DDs back on again -- one long phonecall, the man on the other end of the line very helpful, tho somewhat chucklesome as regards my methodology -- and, though this wasn't really needed, phoned all the various utilities to explain the hiatus. When I got to GAS, I asked if was behind and needed to catch up, and he said -- very puzzled voice -- "No, sir, you're actually a little in credit. You owe us nothing."
"Do you owe me?"
"Well, yes."
"How much?"
"Um, a thousand pounds sir."
"Can I have it back?"
"Certainly sir. Give me your bank details -- oh, I have them, don't I? I'll transfer it all, today."
New shoes for baby, shiny xmas presents for friends (and self): best holiday gift ever.
OK this isn't really an advert for DDs but it is my favourite ever phone conversation with the gas people.
There's been controversy about funding - I think they start out semi-private before the National Archives take over completely; or at least, there are private donations that have drawn the same kind of attention that campaign contributions get. There's a perspective issue, since they may be, at least initially, a bit more celebratory than you'd want an official non-partisan repository to be. And there's the issue of keeping these documents separate from other National Archives documents: extra building and administrative costs, less accessible locations, etc.
Plus, George F'ing W Bush does not deserve a library.
86: I'm OK as long as it has a Pet Goat Memorial children's reading room.
And no more politicians, honestly, either for airports or money. Barbara McClintock and Gibbs and Scott Joplin or Thelonius Monk on the money, John Holmes and some burlesque queen for the airports.
Further, acknowledge the importance of reality TV by subjecting all the stars of the original survivor to indefinite TSA detention and renaming the train stations of the cities where they are mummified after them.
One complaint I've heard from historians in Europe is how damn expensive and inconvenient it makes research on the US. If you're doing research on national stuff in a European country you go and hang out for a while in the capital. You only need to go elsewhere if your research requires local government archives. In America if, say, you're doing research on US foreign policy wrt Poland in the Cold War era, as a friend of mine was, you need to spend time in DC of course, but also Boston, Missouri, Texas, California, etc. This is a very expensive pain in the ass. (Germany is sort of an exception courtesy of the old Bundesrepublik's penchant for scattering national institutions all over the place.)
Yeah, unfortunately it's probably not going to change for the existing institutions, but there are people calling for the abolition of the separate system altogether for future administrations.
Suckers- the BHO library is going to be in Nairobi, of course.
91: Nonsense. There won't be any presidential libraries when Obama's Al Qaeda shocktroopers burn all the books.
You guys got it all wrong. When the BHO Presidential Library Treaty gets passed by the UN, everyone in the whole world will be required by force of law to set aside space in his or her home for a personal in-home BHO indoctrination library and shrine.
93: The GWB and Reagan libraries amply demonstrate that books are not required.
amusement park, then. or amusement ranch.
97: Which prez most deserves a bunny ranch? I think one name springs immediately to mind, but it seems a little on-the-nose.
(I knew [slightly] someone who worked at the bunny ranch. The wife of a friend of my brothers. One brother even helped her on her quest for fame by appearing with her (in an entirely fictional and scripted scenario) on a daytime talk show.)
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I imagine this has probably been posted already:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/20/86-year-old-wwii-vet.html
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All ex-presidents should get a schlocky restaurant chain, à la Hard Rock Café. Menu items and décor at each chain will reflect the corresponding ex-president's legacy. For instanct, GWB's place will serve WMD's: Waffles of Much Deliciousness.
To keep them humble, each ex-president will be required to work 20 hours a week washing dishes.
100: Oh god. I watched that yesterday and sobbed for 20 minutes. (I had also just read the letter exchange between Mrs Sullivan and FDR on that Letters site, so my sobbing pump was primed.)