Jump On the E-bill Train

I think it's weird how people don't understand the concept of ebills and paperless billing. It's simple, you get the same information but it doesn't clutter up your life or leave a paper trail for crooked mailbox thieves to steal. You can pay electronically, that I think most people get, but you don't have to ever EVER get a paper statement. AND if you do, you should complain. One day in the not so distant future, companies will CHARGE you if you REQUEST a paper statement. Just like the airline industry did with paperless ticketing, only hopefully they won't start charging you for every little thing like one checked bag or a snack in flight.

Half Assing It

On my continued pursuit of getting approved for a credit card, I have acquired a Target store card. I applied for the VISA card, but they decided that it was a better to just go ahead and send me a store card, you know, because I’m such a risky consumer (heavy heavy sarcasm here).

So anyway, I get my first ebill notification, and I add them to my list of payees on my new bank site but I realize that they won’t send my ebill to my bank. This really grinds my gears. I still have to go log on to the Target site, find out how much I owe, and then enter in the amount to pay from my bank site. It’s almost perfect. It’s sooo close to being an easy, idiot-proof process, but instead they require a leap from the Target Site to my bank site.

“Big deal, so what?” – that’s your response to my seemingly unfounded rant, fyi.

Did I ever tell you about my Subway story? About how my 6-inch sub sandwich turned into 128 bucks and a week of hassle? Human error happens, and having to manually enter in $ amounts leads to inevitable mistakes.

As a marketing kid, I know the importance of directing traffic to your website, I do, but there are better ways. Personally, when I’m paying the credit card bill and I see exactly how much money I throw away on impulse buys there, the LAST thing I’m going to do is rack up more charges. Give me an email coupon (because I’m such a valued customer) that directs me to the site instead.

Point in case: make my bill paying as easy and painless as possible, let me do it all in one place that is neutral and free of marketing ploys. Give the banks the ebill, and make me want to visit your website some other way. Let me associate the bank with spending money and the Target website with getting things that I want (think Vegas casinos using plastic chips instead of actual currency).

Bad News for the Postal Service

There are some pretty serious rumors flying around about the USPS considering moving to a 5 day work week. I feel a bit bad that I'm constantly ragging on the postal service lately, but they just aren't able to keep up now that most documents can be sent anywhere in the world at the click of a button for free.

What does this mean for America? If you are still among the laggards (that's marketing speak, you know) on the ebill train, then you had better plan accordingly when you send your paper checks. If they do cut out Saturdays, then there will be just that much more mail to process during the week. So it might actually take longer than expected, it may take 2 extra days for your letters to arrive... or maybe it won't. Personally, I don't care to find out.