Once upon a time it was enough to just worry about getting the money to pay bills. Now, not only do you have to worry about getting the money to pay bills, you have to worrying about making sure that when you actually pay a bill that the payment is credited to your account.

Some years ago, I had internet access with AT&T and every month AT&T terminated my account even though the account was paid. At one point, I tried paying the account several months in advance and still AT&T terminated my account every month. AT&T claimed that their payment system was credit card based and that if no credit card payment showed they terminated the account even when they had my payment in hand in the form of a check or money order.

I pay one of my website hosting services by electronic wire payment after they failed several times to credit checks that I had mailed into them. Every month I wire in a payment, I verify with my bank that the payment was sent and I get the federal confirmation number showing that the wire transfer was received by the Webhoster's bank. Every month without fail, I get an email from this Webhoster claiming that my payment is late. Once after I called the Webhoster and gave them the federal confirmation number that the payment was in their account, this person in accounting said: "Well, just because you can prove that our bank received it, it doesn't mean that we received it".

One of the only reasons I have to actually leave Manhattan is to pay a bill for a self-storage service. I could make this payment by check or money order, but every month I go to this place and pay the bill in cash and get a signed receipt. On my last payment, I gave this woman three twenties a ten and eight singles. This woman gave me a receipt for $78.00 and on my way out, I simply asked if everything was okay. This woman said: "Um, no I only have $58.00 here". After much conversation back and forth in which I was accused of having cheated them out of twenty dollars because I had a signed receipt for $78.00 when I had only given them $58.00, this idiot ••••••• bitch found the missing twenty dollar bill on the floor just behind the counter where she had dropped it.