As summer comes to an end, we're trying to wrap up any loose ends from the move. I've been trying to make sure that our address has been changed, our outstanding bills have been paid and that in general life runs smoothly. Yet in the past 24 hours I have been thwarted in almost everything that we tried to do:
1. Last night, I thought that it would be a good idea to ensure that our address was up to date for Good Housekeeping magazine. Yes, I subscribe to and enjoy this magazine despite my less than good housekeeping skills/desires. According to the website, I had updated my address and my subscription was set to expire in October. This led me to look for renewal information. Alas, when I clicked on "renew", I was informed that "there are no current renewal offers for you at this time". Apparently they don't want my business.
But wait. It gets funnier. I went back to my profile and then saw in small print that my address was listed as "undeliverable" and therefore my account has been suspended until I rectify this situation.
I decided that it would be simpler to start a new subscription and pretend that the old one never existed. I happily signed up for 3 years and went to pay the exhorbitant extra shipping fee to Canada. Done! Or so I thought. This morning I found the following missive in my email account:
"Our records show that you recently provided new information while ordering a subscription that does not match your saved profile. If you would like to update your profile with this new information, please click here."
I will confess that I have yet to deal with it. It seems unimportant compared to other things we're dealing with.
2. We received a bill in the mail yesterday from Johnson County Wastewater Services for $8.99, $5 of which was supposedly a late fee. The bill was stamped "delinquent" and indicated that it needed to be paid immediately. We had given all of the utilities our forwarding address for final bills, yet none of them could process an out-of-country address so we were assured that the bills would be forwarded from the old address and we could go ahead and pay them online.
I asked Ben to call to get the $5 fee removed since we certainly hadn't received any other bills. He was able to do so easily, and he told the nice lady on the phone that we would pay the bill online through our bank account immediately. I logged in to our US account right after he hung up, only to find that our bank does not permit bill payments of under $5.
Ben called back and was able to make a payment over the phone instead.
3. Ben called our US VISA card provider to ensure that they had processed our change of address to Canada. He also wanted to confirm that we could keep the account since it seemed to imply somewhere in the paperwork that this particular card was only available to US residents. The card in question is a Priority Club VISA and is connected to our Holiday Inn Priority Points card. When Ben called the VISA number, they transferred him to the Points Club people to process the address change.
Unsurprisingly, the Points Club already had our correct address since we use our hotel points on a rather frequent basis. They transferred him back to the VISA people who were finally able to confirm that they had indeed processed a change of address with our recent payment and we could keep the card.
4. Our US cell phone contract expires on August 31st. We also have an older prepaid US cell phone that we will be keeping indefinitely. I looked online to see how many minutes we had left on it and realized that it still had an old US address attached to our profile. I attempted to change it online and was informed that "for addresses outside of the US, please call *insert 1-800 number here*".
Ben called, only to be told by the customer service rep that he wasn't sure if a change could be processed since his system was set up with a US-based address system. Um, ok. Then why have a 1-800 number to deal with addresses outside of the US in the first place!??! The man took down our new address and said that he would see what he could do about changing it. I'm not holding my breath on that one.
5. I realized belatedly that our Canadian cell phone bill was rather late in arriving. So late, in fact, that it is now slightly overdue. Apparently one of us signed up for e-billing. E-billing, or paperless billing, might be more environmentally friendly, but it's not so friendly to our bank account since neither one of us seems to remember to pay bills without a paper statement! (or at least an email reminder)
I still haven't paid the bill. Why not? Because when I attempted to log in to our account online, it told me that the site was currently down. I have faith that things will be fixed soon though. After all, this isn't Rogers.
6. Ben called to cancel our US VISA card that was issued by our Canadian bank. He politely asked if they would refund the annual fee that was literally just charged the other day. The VISA rep was wonderful. She refunded the fee and let us know that the card was cancelled and we could either pay the remaining balance now, or wait for our final statement. I went online and paid it, because clearly I will forget to do so otherwise!
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