Pkin has a trailer, the registration renewal was $97. I went online to pay it; I'm saving fossil fuels, doing things the green way! We got the tags about a week after I was online. All was wonderful!
Apparently, the DMV doesn't check to see if your payment clears before they mail out tags. We got a DEMAND FOR PAYMENT letter from the DMV.
Our "check ... was not honored by the bank." Well, there wasn't a request made to the bank to pay any DMV charges. We have plenty of funds in the bank; and we didn't get any returned check charges. But we did get a bill from the DMV for $210 that must be paid by certified check or some other instrument that's going to cost of even more dollars to pay.
I'm wondering if the State is just trying to balance the horrid budget deficit one DMV charge at a time. Did I mention that the number to call to dispute the charge is always busy? It's a toll number too! Now I have to go to the bank, get a cashier's check or something like that, and I'm not trusting the payment to the USPS so I have to go to the DMV. Yikes! Oh, do you think they will accept cash? Quarters?
My one fault in this is that I didn't write the online payment in my register so I didn't see that the DMV payment didn't clear. I'm beginning to really dislike government. There should be a special case for someone who made a good faith effort to pay on time but I can't even talk to someone at DMV.
eBay makes it easy to pay. PayPal works! Arnold, let Meg show you how to use it!
It isn't just the gov. that has such degraded service due to crappy processes and systems that clearly aren't talking to each other.
I just changed insurance companies because they kept dropping my policy for non payment. Even though they sent me an invoice and I sent the payment in on time. I had them on the phone once when this all happened over 8 days before payment was due. I pointed this out to them and they just couldn't explain it. They acted like it was an anomaly but it happened about 3 times a year.
The kicker is that when they canceled my policy the last time I found out because they sent me a refund from my payment. They took my money but no payment showed so they cut me a check to return the money paid.
I just went ahead and changed companies and called to tell them never mind I'm breaking up with you forever. About 2 days later I got a letter saying "fine, you have canceled but now we have decided you owe us $200 for the coverage you had." This is after they sent my payment back. So they had the money, sent it back, and now they want it again.
Last night when I got home I had a check from them that was additional refund for homeowners insurance.
I guess I shouldn't complain too much. These could be all bills and no refunds. But I can't believe they can have the money and not know they have it when it counts.
Gas co. and cable co. just did similar things last month. So annoying. Oh, and cell phone too. That customer service rep was pretty embarrassed to admit that the money they felt was overdue was for an invoice that WAS PRINTING right now.
Orgs need to stop laying off the little guys in bad economic climates. I rarely feel the pinch when an exec gets laid off.
Posted by: Laurie | March 03, 2010 at 12:57 PM