Eminem as a Pitchman?

I’m going to ignore the Brisk Iced Tea commercial for the time being but what was Chrysler thinking?

I got the message of the commercial — yeah, yeah, Detroit is making a comeback and Chrysler is trying to market themselves as edgier or something by using a local celebrity in a wicked long commercial.

On paper, or in a brainstorming marketing meeting, that sounds like a pretty good commericial, I’ll admit.

But then you choose Eminem to star?

What, was the scummy Kid Rock unavailable?

Now I know that Emimem has a pretty big fan base but his fan base would only make up a tiny sliver of the total Super Bowl audience — most of which would have tuned out long before the commercial aired anyway…

To the masses, Eminem is the guy who can’t get a full sentence out without using profanity, beat his girlfriend/wife, and on top of that, he hates his mom too.

Would you want someone like that as your spokesman for a 12-million dollar plus spot during the Super Bowl?

The vast majority is who Chrysler should be marketing towards…but they chose not to.

I won’t be buying a Chrysler. I probably won’t be buying anything out of Detroit — actually.

Seriously, though, most of the cars are made across the river in Canada anyway. “Imported” from Detroit is right…

Justin Bieber might have been a more appropriate spokesman… and, last time I checked, he still lives with his mom.

Posted on February 7th, 2011 at 6:36 pm by Brainy Smurf
Current Events, Rants, Television | 2 Comments »

Bank of America: Sneaky, Sneaky Fees

So while reconciling my numbers last night I noticed that my BoA checking account balance was off by $14.00.

Hardly a troubling sum but I’m seldom off by a penny.

And $14 even? What could that be?

A “fee” was the first thing that came to mind…

Had I used another bank’s ATM? Had I needed a money order or a cashier’s check? Had I done something out of the ordinary in the past 30 days?

Three strikes — I hadn’t done anything unusual.

8 seconds of research revealed the culprit.

Yep, as expected, on December 23rd I was hit with a $14.00 charge labeled as a “Monthly Maintenance Fee“.

Not impressed.

The last time I was hit with one of these, they’d changed the “flavor” of my checking account under the guise of night following one of their many bank mergers.

Apparently, then, BoA was not offering the account that my former bank (which was swallowed up by BoA) was so they just changed it and hit me with a fee.

Crazy, my account number never changed. My PIN hasn’t changed either. My checking account certainly did, though…

I had that all taken care of with a nasty phone call — and took note of the “new” minimum requirements to operate fee free.

The only parameter that applied to my situation was a minimum $1000 balance.

No problem, I thought, I can do that.

I’d been maintaining a 4-figure balance for as long as I could remember so I was under the impression that I essentially had that “free checking” you hear advertised so often.

Then, back in 2008, you know, when the sky was falling, I remember getting a big old mailing from BoA regarding a change of terms for their Checking accounts.

For compassionate reasons or whatever, they’d lowered their minimum balance to $750. They were pretty darn proud of it — like they were heros or something.

Cool — I thought. Though I still maintained a $1000 balance, at least now I had a bit more wiggle room should I need it. You may have noticed in my net worth updates that (very) occasionally my checking account would dip into the $900′s.

No biggie, right?

Wrong.

Apparently BoA changed their terms again back in November. No glossy spread to announce the change this time – Minimum daily balance in checking– $1500 or more.

Nice, huh? They doubled the minimum balance. Un-announced too, as far as I’m concerned.

But, hey, the recession is over, right? It’s all good.

I’m just glad it’s only cost me $14.

Make that $28 — I’ve got less than $1500 in my checking account right now…

Might be a good time to make the switch to my hometown Toronto Dominion, peculiarly dubbed “America’s Most Convenient Bank”…

(For the geographically-challenged — Toronto is in Canada…)

Posted on December 27th, 2010 at 7:33 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Rants | 5 Comments »

Renovation Update: Stain & Poly-whatever… and Earl.

Okay, so we’ve hit a bump in the road on the renovation process.

When compared to all of our other previous home improvements — I kinda knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. Things were coasting along far too nicely…

We had the new floors sanded, stained, and poly-whatevered this week. It looks alright, I think…

The problem is that the flooring dudes were sub-contracted out and compared to the real in-house guys that our contractor has used for everything else so far, well, they don’t stack up.

They suck, actually.

So much so that the dry wall guys will probably need to come back in… And then painters will need to come back in again too because of how sloppy these morons were with the stain.

They have so much to touch up — after they’d already finished a job well done that, well, I feel sorry for them.

Worse, is that I think it sucks that our nice and solid brand new walls with a single coat of paint on them are going to end up looking like, well, repeatedly painted walls less than one month into their lifespan. So much for nice sharp corners. Sorry — that just sucks.

They even got stain on our nice new white lightswitches… I mean, seriously, why are so many contractors like this?

Further, guess where all of that remaining hardwood flooring that I’m guessing will be used for the staircase ended up? Well, they put that out on the front porch. Not sure if you’d heard but there’s this hurricane named Earl approaching and, well, our floor is outside.

Now I know that hardwood is supposed to be strong or whatever and I don’t really think we’re going to see much of a hurricane in my neck of the woods anyway but I’m also pretty certain that the flooring we’ve had installed isn’t “all-weather” flooring.

Is it my responsibility to move it back into the house myself?

I don’t think so.

If I don’t move it back in, will it make the cost of my project go up?

Probably.

It’s a crappy situation.

Personally, though it hasn’t been rained on (yet), I still think the integrity of the unused floor boards has been compromised already. That really sucks.

We emailed the contractor already to let him know the remaining supplies are on the front porch — and he just emailed us back (for real — just now) to let us know to bring it back in. I’m sure he’s thinking “wtf?” right about know… Might even be calling the flooring guys to say it outloud…

I guess I’m glad that’s solved.

I’m also thankful that everyone else left to come back in has been here before — we’ve met all of them and you know what? They’ve done a great job. I’m just angry for them since these bozos just made their jobs a little more difficult…

Anyway, enough of the rant…and on to the floors!

(click here for more of the “before” photos from all of the rooms…)

We went with a dark stain, obviously.

I know, I know, some of you are probably thinking, “Dude, it looked better before you stained it — you ruined your brand new floor” and to a certain degree, I know where you’re coming from.

I liked the natural look too.

My wife said it would show dirt more easily.

She’s right and then I started to think that it’d look like a basketball court and, trust me, I hate basketball so we couldn’t have that.

Dark was the way to go. We settled on “Dark Walnut”. I think I’d have preferred an even darker stain — I didn’t expect the grain to pop as much as it did — but this looks pretty good. Again, not what I pictured but pretty darned good.

It doesn’t clash with the colours we’ve selected for the walls (though I suppose we could totally alter the colours now) and it’s not that standard generic blond colour that you see in all of the McMansions still being built during this apparent housing slump.

We’re fortunate enough to be able to totally customize the interior of our house right now so we’re not going to make generic and bland decisions. Thin strip hardwood flooring in a dark colour is definitely not a common sight…

That said, do you think it’s too dark?

Some people think that dark colours make rooms look smaller but I don’t know if I agree… I mean, rooms in a 125+ year old house are pretty small as it is — I’m not sure the floor colour is going to trick anyone into thinking otherwise…

Posted on September 2nd, 2010 at 8:19 pm by Brainy Smurf
Home Improvements, Rants | 4 Comments »

Tax Evasion on the Road

One annoyance that I seem to stew over repeatedly is traffic.

It’s never the number of cars on the road — my commute is quite tame. All two miles worth.

Instead, even with such a short commute, it’s the number of, well, criminals and just plain idiots out there on the road with me.

I’ve ranted about Virginia drivers — I’m sorry, you’re terrible.

I’ve gone on and on about how practically every other car in Connecticut has a temporary handicapped placard hanging from their rearview when it’s quite clear that there isn’t anyone with a physical handicap in the car.

Red lights? who cares! Apparently these days you just need to honk your horn as you speed through one and it’s okay.

It drives me bonkers when I see a smoker toss a butt out the window. That’d be like me throwing gum wrappers out the window (which I don’t). The former is apparently okay but the latter is littering? Explain that one to me…

I nearly explode when I see someone empty an entire ashtray at a stop light (if they even bothered to stop.)

School buses? Don’t even get me started.

And I’m not even going to go into my feelings on texting while driving.

Would you believe that I actually saw a guy texting while on a motorcycle a couple of weeks ago? No joke… I should have run him over…

So go back up to the photo at the top of this post.

This guy was in front of me at an ATM last weekend. Everything seems to be pretty normal to the untrained eye but when you look a little closer, this is kind of like when a bank robber puts on a fake moustache to hide their identity…

The dealer logo on his truck indicated that he bought the truck less than one mile from where I live so… isn’t it a but odd that he has a Florida license plate? A special one, even…

Wonder why that is?

Well, I’ll tell you why…

He’s a tax cheat.

Here in Connecticut, we need to pay personal property taxes on our automobiles.

It sucks — I’ll be the first to tell you.

The very illegal way around this, though, is to register your car in another state. That way Connecticut has no idea that you even own the car (which seems odd in this digital age)…

Florida, apparently, is an easy state to “use” in this situation.

Seriously, I’d say that 10% of cars on the road in Connecticut have Florida plates slapped on them right from day one. Really, I’ve never seen a space shuttle or a manatee in Connecticut but they’re all over the license plates up here.

Further, 90% of the cars with Florida plates have bogus handicapped placards too.

Hey, if you’re going to break the law, why not go all out, right?

So back to this tax cheat, I mean, you’d think that allegedly being a fire fighter, you know, he’d hold himself to a higher standard being a pseudo government official of sorts.

Really, some even consider them heroes. I’m not of that sort but that’s neither here nor there…

Even still, I think we can all agree that heroes should pay their taxes.

What really blows my mind is that the police (also apparently heroes) don’t seem to care.
You’d think that our state government would be upset about all of this lost tax revenue, not to mention illegal tax evasion going on.

It’d be quite easy to stop and then enforce — I mean it’s right out in the open under their noses.

Just using the guy up top as an example:

• His car was purchased at a dealership in central Connecticut.
• He has a bumper sticker touting that his kid was a student of the month at a local elementary school.
• His freakin’ vanity plate clearly indicates that he’s a “Connecticut Fire Fighter”.
• His car is registered in Florida.

Um, can you say guilty?

Posted on May 15th, 2010 at 9:08 pm by Brainy Smurf
Rants, Taxes | 1 Comment »

Taxes Filed – Refund(s) Received!

I’ve been *so* behind with posting over the last few months so much so that I didn’t even do my annual “I Filed my Taxes Today” post this year.

Cutting to the chase, I filed my taxes back on February 13. It was a fun filled Saturday morning spent in front of the computer telling TurboTax that, no, once again, I did not earn any income working on a farm and I don’t have an illegal alien working as a maid and living under the basement steps.

Seriously — you spend far too much time answering questions that only apply to a tiny tiny tiny slice of the population but good luck finding where to enter how much you paid in property taxes…

Or how to get your $1000 credit for making a person? I checked the box but I didn’t see my refund magically go up $1000… Whatever…

Anyway, 2009 was a bit of a step backwards in the Smurf household. We earned around $10k less.

That’s okay though — unlike a lot of folks my age, I’m fully aware that my top earning days are behind me. I neve expected my income to continually rise the way it did through my twenties and I’ve definitely run into a plateau of sorts.

Maybe 2010 will be better but I doubt it. Some might blame the economy, or whatever, but the fact is, at a certain point, you just level off. I’m cool with that.

The good news is that we didn’t owe this year like we did last year. I wasn’t sure *how* that was the case last year but we took steps to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again.

Making $10k less didn’t hurt our cause either.

In the end, as you can see up at the top, we received $2585 back Federal and $1262 back from the State for a grand total of $3847.

No small sum but I have to admit — I really thought we’d be getting more.

I’m glad that I wasn’t counting on it but I almost feel naive for actually thinking that having a kid would “aid” me in my taxes in a get-rich-quick sort of way.

Right now, it sorta feels like that “buy a house and you’ll get tons of money back on your taxes” myth. I fell for that one too.

Gee — borrow over a hundred thousand dollars, pay thousands upon thousands of dollars in interest and then we’ll give you $30 back on your taxes for your troubles. Such a deal!

Maybe it’s just me…

Oh, and I’m pretty sure I ranted about this last year but I’m going to rant about it again this year cause it really rubs me the wrong way…

In the mail, I received a Form 1099-G from the State of Connecticut indicating that I “earned” $1258 from them in 2009 and that I had to report it as income on my taxes.

Okay, so I was over taxed in 2008 by $1258. Then, in 2009, they refunded me the $1258. And finally in 2010, I need to pay taxes on that same $1258 that I overpaid in 2008.

So, wait, why again do I have to pay taxes on my refund?

I already over paid taxes on it once — the state gave it back to me — and then I had to pay taxes on it again?

Double taxation, no?

Posted on February 27th, 2010 at 9:45 am by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Rants, Taxes | 5 Comments »

Three Misguided Senior Perspectives from a 30-Something

As we stumble into another election season here in the US, the fact that the senior citizens are generally the largest voting block (and dictate who actually wins) is really starting to scare the crap out of me.

Whether it’s my parents, my friend’s parents, or even the interactions I’ve had with the dinosaurs that attend our imaginary government meetings (the meetings aren’t imaginary, the government is — it’s complicated), I can’t help but notice how differently they see things and how, well, out of touch they are with how things work these days — simply because they don’t need to stay in touch with how things work.

The first thing I think they’ve lost touch with is this whole healthcare issue that has been in the news for the past few months. Yeah, yeah, I know they’re all over the whole medicare side of things (for their own reasons) but they can’t understand why the “younger” set is by-and-large upset with the wacky costs associated with health insurance.

In my own situation, I’d consider myself pretty well off. My wife and I both have full time jobs and both offer health insurance. It sounds like a pretty cushy situation but we’re still paying around $15000 per year for insurance — and this isn’t for some special elite plan. I don’t think the average senior realizes that it’s that high of a number — it wasn’t during their working days.

Yep — using an average household income of $50,233 (2007 numbers), healthcare is costing us nearly 30% of our PRE-TAX income. You can’t deny the percentages — the average American household wasn’t blowing 30% of their pre-tax income in the 1970′s and 1980′s unless, of course, they were a really unhealthy family.

The crazy part in my own personal situation is that I haven’t been to a doctor in over a decade. Do the math… Yep, I should have an extra 6-figures in my pocket. It’s highway robbery. It really is.

Now I’m not saying that a government plan is the best option (even though I am Canadian and do, in theory, support such an idea) or even a solution, I just think that there’s a HUGE segment of the voting population that are completely unaware of what the younger folks are paying, not for services, but for just-in-case insurance. It’s not right.

The next thing is the whole concept of a 401k plan. I’ve heard two or three people over the past couple of months someone say along the lines of, “Yeah, well you don’t need pensions because people your age have 401ks…”

I don’t know about you but there are an awful lot of companies out there that don’t even offer 401k plans — I’m pretty sure that most of my friends have nothing of the sort. And even if they do, good luck finding a company that *still* offers a match — sometimes I even have to laugh that employers call it a “benefit”.

Using my own 401k as a real life example : I’ve been contributing to it pretty heavily for a dozen years to receive the largest possible employer match (from when they were *still* offering a match). You know, basically making the most of it that I possibly could.

My total balance right now is right around $79000. Fourteen thousand of that is from my employer — or a little over $1000 per year over my 12 years of contributing.

You can throw phrases like “compound interest” or “tax deferred” in there all you like, there is NO WAY that anyone can claim that $1000 per year over a 25-30 year career (if you’re lucky) is going to be enough to “retire” on.

The fact is — employers aren’t going to take care of their “former” workforce like they used to and calling a 401k plan a “retirement” plan similar to a pension is, well, like comparing apples to asparagus. One tastes like crap.

That’s right Mom, I still don’t like asparagus. I think, at this point, it’s safe to say that I never will.

So, from my employer’s contributions to my 401k, I might end up with a $200 check each month for a few years once I retire… And don’t forget — I’m at that unfortunate age where I won’t be getting any social security checks on top of it all either… Ouch.

And on the subject of fixed incomes and social security checks, what is up with the seniors getting all upset about not getting a “raise” in 2010…

Are they as out of touch as Wall Street?

Maybe my job sucks but I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone — I haven’t gotten a raise since 2003. It might even be as far back as 2001 but plain and simple, right now, I’m certainly not expecting a token raise anytime soon, you know, just because…

Really, everyone’s cost-of-living has gone up (I personally haven’t noticed) but those still lucky enough to be part of the workforce aren’t seeing the “adjustments” that the seniors have come to expect. It’s messed up — the seniors need to get in touch with reality on this one.

Again, like the 401k/pension thing, that isn’t how things work anymore — people don’t get token raises just because…

But in the end, it’s really funny to me as I can’t deny that I’ve jumped the bandwagon before and said stuff like, “Yeah, the bratty Gen Y’s out there just expect everything to be handed to them…” but now I’m seeing first hand that AARP members are just as expectant of handouts.

Weird how perspectives change… or fail to change… Seems that every generation can fall into that often mocked me-me-me category indicating that one thing is for certain — we’re not all in this together.

Posted on October 19th, 2009 at 8:18 pm by Brainy Smurf
401k, Current Events, Finance, Health, Life, Rants | 4 Comments »

Good or Bad: Accessing it All Under One Account?

With as much disdain as I have for CountryWide, you’d think that I’d be thrilled to see the note that they’re currently displaying on their website:

Yeah, it brings me some satisfaction that their name will no longer exist (though their business practices won’t change a bit). I’ll admit that much.

So long — good riddance.

But this message also brings me a little bit of anxiety. Back when Bank of America took over MBNA, MBNA’s old site had a message very similar to this — so when the day came that I had to pay my credit card bills on Bank of America’s website, it wouldn’t let me log in — even though they’d said it would be a seamless transition.

The problem?

Yep, I’m one of those people that uses the same username for ALL of my accounts. The passwords vary but the user name is always the same.

Yeah, yeah, don’t give me that identity theft lecture…

Seriously, accounts that I’d had with 5 different institutions are now all under the same umbrella — that’s an identity theft risk in and of itself, no?

Anyway, at the time. I couldn’t use my MBNA user name to log in to Bank of America’s website because I already had a checking account with Bank of America using that exact same user name.

See the problem?

Same thing happened a few years later when BoA combined their Business site with the Personal site — I’d log in and see my checking account, my BoA credit card, a couple of MBNA credit card accounts, but no sign of the business account.

Both times, the issue resolved itself after a couple of months and a few *very* confusing phone calls.

“Thank you for calling Bank of America. Account number, please?”

“Um, Jenny Jenny 867-5309.”

“Okay, sir, you should be able to log in — I have that as a valid account number.”

“Nope, still not working, when I log in, I can’t see that account, just my other accounts.”

“Well, sir, you need to use the login information you used while you were with MBNA to access that account.”

“I can’t — it’s the same as the login information I’ve been using for Bank of America.”

Thankfully, I’ve never encountered a rude BoA customer service person on the phone. Not once. They haven’t always been able to help, but they’re not jerks about it either.

So I guess that on November 9th, we’ll see what happens over on bankofamerica.com. I’ll either be able to see just my mortgage account or everything but. I’m not too worried about it — I just find it annoying.

Oh yeah, and you know what’s really lame? Even though *everything* is Bank of America now, I still can’t make same day payments or transfers between accounts. Sometimes it *still* takes three days…

What’s up with that?

Posted on October 17th, 2009 at 8:37 am by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Mortgage, Rants | 2 Comments »

Chicago-style Commute

We had our first snowfall of the season here in Connecticut this afternoon — pretty early for us too. I mean, I haven’t even started raking leaves yet?!

Last year it didn’t snow until Decemember 7th…

Anyway, there isn’t much in the way of accumulation (it’s still snowing) but it’s as though the people on the road have *never* seen snow before. I hate how that happens.

Really, tonight my three mile commute home from work took…50 minutes!?. How ridiculous is that?

In my prime, I could *run* that distance in under 16 minutes. In fact, I could’ve walked home faster.

Apparently, according to the local news, this isn’t the earliest snow we’ve ever had. Way back when we had a significant snowfall during the first week of October. I’m shocked that I don’t remember it but that’s probably because it was right around the time that I would have been too busy memorizing things like ↑, ↑, ↓, ↓, ←, →, ←, →, B, A, Select, Start…

Someone out there will know *exactly* what I’m talking about…

I hope.

PIAC Post Extension:
I titled the post Chicago-style commute because I’ve never encountered traffic worse than that of greater-Chicago. Three miles in a little under an hour seems about right. It’s no wonder that my dad took the train to work when we used to lived there.

Posted on October 15th, 2009 at 8:14 pm by Brainy Smurf
Current Events, Rants, Retro | 3 Comments »

Escaped Monkey-Fightin’ Snakes Cause Multi-Car Crash

No joke – this was the lead story all day yesterday and much of the day today in my neck of the woods…

A 20-year-old driver told police his baby pet snakes are to blame for a multi-car crash he caused on Main Street Monday morning.

Angel Rolon lost control of his SUV as he and a passenger scrambled to catch the two snakes, he told police. He said they escaped from his pants pockets and slithered down near the gas and brake pedals, police said.

Rolon is charged with reckless driving, failure to drive in proper lane, driving while being distracted and driving without a license.

At least three other cars were involved in the crash, reported to police at 10:20 a.m. Rolan’s SUV sustained heavy front end damage and rolled over onto the driver’s side.

Animal control responded to the scene but did not find the snakes, police said.

Okay, I’m not sure where to begin…

But on the subject of snakes in odd situations, has anyone else seen the safe-for-television re-dubbed version of Snakes on a Plane on USA or TNT?

“I’ve had it with these monkey-fightin’ snakes on this Monday-Friday plane!”

So, anyway, I hope the police inquired as to why anyone would put some monkey-fightin’ snakes in their Monday/Friday pockets and then go for a monkey-fightin’ drive during monkey-fightin’ rush hour?

Seriously…

And I thought driving while texting was dangerous…

Posted on July 28th, 2009 at 7:47 pm by Brainy Smurf
Current Events, Movies, Rants | No Comments »

Baby Bill Finally Arrives…and We’ve got Questions…

No, we’re not disputing the amount.

Prior to that incredibly inconsiderate and premature collections call from the hospital, our insurance company hinted at what the damage to our wallets would be.

The insurance company’s explanation of benefits from a couple of weeks ago indicated that we’d be on the hook for around $1890.68.

That’s fine and exactly the amount that today’s bill indicated.

The thing is, I was really interested in seeing a detailed statement with all of the services we received, like, broken down and itemized.

You know, seeing that the fee for having that old lady escort us out was an astounding $75. Or that that horrible bowl of pudding cost us $16.99. That sort of thing.

Something to get me fired up about the ludicrous cost of health care…

Well, this is what we recieved:

Not much to look at, huh?

No joke. It was this and a return envelope. That’s it.

I dunno. Was it wrong to expect more?

I want to know what all that money went towards!

Can you imagine if something like your long distance phone bill came like this? Without an explanation of how they reached the amount due?

I know that it says that we can call to ask questions but I doubt a third party call center in Colorado (that isn’t the hospital’s number) will be able to break down a bill for a service provided at a hospital in Connecticut.

And I wonder what the reaction would be at the information desk just inside the hospital’s main entrance would be if I asked them to explain the bill to me…

In the end, we’ll just write a check and mail it off but I’ll always wonder how much that epidural cost, how much the anesthesiologist’s services cost, how much that little hat that they put on him cost, and, yes, even how much that terrible bowl of pudding set us back…

Posted on July 7th, 2009 at 10:36 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Rants, Smurfling | 6 Comments »

Celebrating Independence by Writing a Check

What could be more patriotic than paying your property taxes?

That’s exactly what my wife and I did for the Fourth of July.

In Connecticut, we have to pay local property taxes on our automobiles. We used to be pretty unique in that respect but, from what I’ve heard, now roughly half of the country has a similar tax. Greedy government… Grrrr…

The bill came on Wednesday.

Not including her car (she pays her taxes, I pay mine), total tax due for my two cars was $385.18.

That’s $42.36 less than last year but it still seems like an awful lot for an 11-year old BMW and a 5-year old subcompact Scion.

Here’s an updated chart of my personal property tax bill for the past nine years:

Sure, looking at the tax that I’ve had to pay in the past, I should be quite pleased.

I’m not — $385.18 is a lot to pay on top of the registration fee, my drivers license fee, and the emissions test fees that I have to pay for on each vehicle.

And if I’m not mistaken, upon purchase, I also paid a 6% sales tax on top of the sticker price.

Grand total on the BMW, I’ve probably forked over nearly $10k to the State of Connecticut in taxes alone.

I dunno, seems a little excessive when you put it all together…

Anyway, it’s a good thing that July is a three paycheck month for me — just like last year.

I can spare it.

Posted on July 4th, 2009 at 9:47 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Rants, Taxes | 1 Comment »

Baby Bill Arrives… Sort of…

So get this, my wife got a call today from the hospital.

They were calling to let us know that “Ducan” (yep, they massacred what I’d consider, while rather uncommon these days, a very simple and traditional name) had an outstanding balance for his May 26 “procedure” and that we’d need to “set-up” a payment plan.

Like a seasoned telemarketing pro, they proceeded right into the list of various payment options.

Confused, my wife interupted with a “What?”

Obviously used to this type of treatment, the caller just pressed on until my wife finally got a word in edgewise.

“We’re not going to set-up a payment plan without a bill.”

Makes sense, right?

The caller then said that the bill had been mailed…

YESTERDAY.

Now, mail service is pretty prompt around here but not *that* prompt.

My wife futher explained that we hadn’t yet recieved a bill and until we had a bill in hand, we weren’t paying anything and definitely not over the phone.

Now I know that the person on the other end of the phone encounters a lot of deadbeats that also claim that they never received a bill in the mail — I realize that — but when the they’re the one that offers up the information that the bill was mailed out YESTERDAY, I mean, c’mon…

We’re not late — we haven’t even recieved the freakin’ bill. (That was just the insurance company’s explanation of benefits last Thursday.)

So, after making my wife feel like a deadbeat, the caller apparently came to terms with the fact that it was plausible that we hadn’t yet receieved a bill…but she still insisted on knowing how we intended to pay the outstanding balance…

“Sorry, we’ll pay you when we receive a bill.”

Click.

Plain and simple, this was a collections call thinly disguised as a courtesy call…

I’m not terribly impressed.

I actually find it completely ridiculous…

Disgusting, even.

And with that, we’ll probably sit on the bill until just days before it’s due.

Had they left us alone, they probably would have had payment in full before the holiday weekend.

(For the record, it wasn’t a scam — it really was the hospital calling.)

The nerve…

Can you believe that?

Posted on June 29th, 2009 at 10:09 pm by Brainy Smurf
Finance, Rants, Smurfling | 4 Comments »