DOH!!!

Today I bothered to go out to the mailbox for the first time in several days, and lo and behold found myself laden with bills--not surprising, really, no matter how many times I pay them, they keep coming. I have a pretty spotty history of paying my bills on time. This is partly due to being pathologically absent-minded, and partly due to my general state of disorganization, which depending on who you talk to is either a charming personality quirk or a major weakness of character. To pay a bill, you first have to FIND it, and when bills come into my house they end up in all sorts of odd places only to emerge 3 days after the due date... and of course I don't think to look for them due to the absentmindedness issue. Out of sight, out of my tiny mind. The other day I found a phone bill under a cookie sheet in the kitchen...

Anyhow, the convenience of online billpay has come to my rescue more than once; but I try not to do it regularly, as I feel it indulges my laziness, and besides I don't trust things to post properly. I'm not sure why I feel mailing them a check is more reliable--call me crazy, but paper just seems inherently more trustworthy than the intertubez. But last month I discovered my Visa bill--rather like Indiana Jones finding the Ark of the Covenant--underneath a pile of sand and snakes in my living room, on the VERY DAY IT WAS DUE. Huzzah--I rushed online to pay it and avoid a late fee. Thank you, online banking!

And.... then I got my new bill today, and I took a quick look at it so I'd recognize it again a month from now when it appeared amid the ruins of ancient Troy in the dining room. Lo and behold, I now had a balance of $awholebunchamoneyplusfees, because the prior payment had never posted. Fucking online payments, I KNEW I couldn't trust them! So I leaped online to see what the deal was.

Sigh. I actually have 2 accounts with MBNA, one for my visa card and one for the loan for my new carpet in the den, which was paid off 2 years ago. Naturally, despite 24+ months of inactivity, that loan appears first when I sign on to my online MBNA account, and apparently somehow my frantic "PAY BILL! PAY BILL NOW!!" hindbrain led me to post a payment in the correct amount, to the completely wrong account. 20 minutes of phone menus and hold music later, I got the dough transferred over to the correct account. And obviously I was right all along--online bill payment CANNOT be trusted. At least not in the hands of a skilled fuckerupper like myself...