We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties...

I miss the days of paying bills by dropping a check in the mail. This morning I received two e-mails from an Internet account provider. The first said the annual payment for my account was due (true) and my account would be charged $1890.00.

Umm... hello what? The message went on to say that the expiration date on my supplied credit card was incorrect and the transaction couldn't go through. Thank God.

The next message said the annual payment on my account was due and I'd be charged $75--the correct amount. Same message about incorrect expiration date. That's odd, because this company has had the same card of mine on file for years.

I e-mailed the service and heard back almost immediately that a batch of incorrect e-mails had been released, and to ignore them. They asked that I update my credit card info and pay online. (This isn't spam, if that's what you're thinking. I went through the site, not the e-mails, to handle all this.)

I updated my credit card, changing the expiration date to the correct month, and hit "Pay Invoice." I recieved an error message that my expiration date was incorrect. I corrected it AGAIN and AGAIN hit "Pay Invoice." Same error message appeared.

Okey-dokey... now I'm ticked. Is my account being charged twice? Has it not been paid? Who the hell knows? All I know is I'm 20 minutes in at this point and longing for the days when I wrote checks by hand. It's like with our phones. Our cordless phones are gasping their last breaths and it's a 50-50 shot if they'll allow us to actually answer a call. Add that in with a cell phone service that covers our house only sporadically and it's practically like living in prarie times around here.

Upshot... we bought new cordless phones and they're charging. The service verified my account has been paid and charged only once. LIfe goes on.

I just wish it would sometimes go on with a bit less technology...