Reluctant Online Banker Gives It A Go

I don’t do online banking. I realize that makes me a timid old lady, not up to date with the Internet world and I don’t mind. Not one bit. I enjoy the hands-on experience of entering my checks in the register, writing the numbers and reconciling my checkbook each month. When I was working I did that modest accounting for two checkbooks and found it satisfying. I use the same adding machine now that I used in those days and that pleases me in a “so there!” kind of way.

Besides online banking seems fraught with disaster. Just one more hacking opportunity for someone determined to make his/her living through cyber crime.

What I do mind is that for the last few months I have been scrambling to pay my condominium fees on time. Our fees are due on the first of the month, considered late on the fifteenth. No reminder is sent. I haven’t actually been late with my payment, but I can be standing looking at cereals at Stop and Shop when suddenly it hits me that it is the tenth of the month and I haven’t paid. The urge to race home and write the check nearly overwhelms me, as if they were going to throw me out any minute.

 I was grousing about this situation when a friend, informed me that she has automatic withdrawal to pay her monthly condo fees. She never has to think about it. That afternoon I headed for my bank armed with condo information.

The kind and helpful young woman in the office—I will call her Mary-- invites me to sit down. I explain my purpose: to set up automatic payments from the bank to my condominium each month. Right away she begins to sell me on the virtues of online banking. “No, No,” I say. “I want just this one thing.”

Her call to the condominium office reveals that the payment can indeed be automatic, but only through the online banking system of my bank.

Right! I am cooked!

Mary seizes the moment to explain that she can help me do this right now in her office—holding my hand, as it were—and then it will be accomplished. That sounds pretty good so I agree. And we do the thing: the ID number, new password, etc.  And suddenly the computer displays a big banking page that says “Welcome, Cecily.”  The bank: my new best friend, with me not at all sure I want to be welcomed.

Mary instructs me to click on Bill Pay in order to enter the payee information. I do this and what comes up is: “Bill Pay is unavailable. We are sorry for the inconvenience. Try again later.”

Mary is dismayed. I, the reluctant online banker, become even more wary. Mary says how very sorry she is and suggests that I go home and “try again later.”

I do that: Four times over a period of two and a half days. The “Bill Pay” message remains the same. On the third day I call Customer Service and while I am passed along to various people on the phone, messages pour into my ear about how fabulous, how convenient, high ranking, and superior this bank is and I confess, I want to throw the phone across the room.

 Ultimately I am shuffled through three layers of tech persons: each one moving me on to his “supervisor.” I end up with young, nice-sounding, Pete, who has me make several moves on my Mac while he engages in various maneuvers at his end—not without glitches. 

“This is a tricky problem,” Pete admits to me. “Bear with me, Cecily.” I have now been on the phone for forty-five minutes and, I have to admit that in spite of not being keen in the first place, stubbornness has set in. I "bear with" Pete.

While he is doing whatever he is doing, I seize the opportunity to tell him exactly that: how reluctant I am about using online banking, how it satisfies me to do my own checkbook and that I want this service for just one monthly transaction.

Pete laughs. “I know what you mean,” he says. ”I do my own checkbook, too. I completely understand,”

 Now I am laughing. “You do?” A tech person for a bank does his own checkbook? 

“Yup.”

I am exonerated! I  think, just as Pete announces triumphantly, “I think I’ve got it!” He tells me to log in again and click on Bill Pay—for what is the fourth time-- and what ho! It works!

I confess to Pete that I am not up for going any further with this project right now. Pete says, ”fine,” but that when I do choose to enter that payee, “you will find” he tells me, “that the system is not as intuitive as you would want.” Therefore, he goes on to say, I should “call tech help to set it up whenever I feel like it.”

“Don’t go through customer service,” Pete says, and he gives me the direct tech number for the bank. “I am so sorry, Cecily, about what a mess this has been and I absolutely understand your hesitation and frustration.”

I thank him for helping me and for making me laugh. Who knows? I may never do this. Then again, maybe I will. But I love this guy!