Paying For The Ringy-Dings

Why was my cell phone reminding me about my bill, I wondered? The answer proved to be that I never got my T-Mobile and Verizon bills in the mail this month and neither was paid.

I usually write out checks the same day I get the bills, but like most other households around here, mine was in a bit of turmoil around the time the bills should have arrived and I didn't notice their absence. Today I saw a clue to the missing mail in this Nov. 9 Nixle post online from a North Jersey mayor:
As you may know Hurricane Sandy also affected first class mail service. This is due to the fact that the Dominick V. Daniels Mail Distribution Center in Kearny was flooded. Kearny is the main mail distributer for
northern New Jersey.

So began a couple of exasperating hours trying to figure out how to pay. There were no stubs with the addresses to put on plain white envelopes - they all got mailed in with previous checks. I tried T-Mobile first at the customer service number and had several go-rounds with the charming robot lady before going online in frustration. I don't like to pay bills online. First there was an ID to find, as I had not used it for many months. I found it in my tattered compendium of log-ins, codes and secret pet names for verifications, but once in the online billing department, I freaked over using my bank account. I settled on the lesser of my two credit cards, figuring a hacker couldn't do very well with that. 

I can't remember exactly how, but I ended up confirming the details with a real human on the cell phone. 

The deed done for t-Mobile, I moved on to Verizon. That robot lady stumped me with her choices of internet or phone or neither. Duh. What about my account that includes both internet and phone?

Confounded by spurious choices, I kept hanging up. I knew there was a way to get a real person on the line, but pressing zero didn't seem to work. On to the computer! I unearthed an ID and a password, but as soon as I logged in, a new problem became evident. I couldn't use my bank account or my credit cards, because the account was under my son's musician name. Our phone listing is in that name, even though I pay the bills. 

Back to the land line. By some kind of luck, I hit zero at the right time and got a very nice woman on the line who calmly straightened everything out and even gave me credit for the time the internet was out. A duplicate bill is in the mail, which I can pay by check less the credit.

Like a lot of people, I still have the jitters from the power outage, though I am aware that we got off easy compared to many others. Both the customer service ladies could relate - one lives in Florida and one shared the New Jersey experience. It was especially the Verizon lady who was just the opposite of Ernestine. She was efficient and empathetic, and I really needed that today.

--Bernice