Tuesday

Monday started out with the gasoline bill due. It's a huge bill and the bank account was very small. If that weren't enough, it was due THAT DAY and due in a city clear across the country. That's cool, I thought, I'll use the credit card.

Looking at the website of the company I owed the bill to, I could find no link to "pay online". Worse, there was not even a phone number listed. What kind of gas company doesn't even have a phone number? Right then and there I knew...I was screwed.

No payment means they'll suspend my gas card, which means no more gas, which means no more driving, which means I'll get to stay home, which means I could hang out on the 'net more, which....ain't such a bad idea. Perhaps I was a bit hasty in paying that bill...

I dug through the old bills, back to the letter they sent welcoming our company to their services and, finally!, found a phone number. It wasn't even a toll free number, I mean, come on! Gas is $3.00 a gallon and I have to pay the long distance charges? I'm in the wrong business, to be sure.

I called the phone number and reached a very nice customer service representative. She verified that they did NOT take credit cards for payment...but...they did have an online service that I could use to set up a direct bank transfer. I could simply go online, take a few moments to set that up and SHAZAM!, I'd be all paid up and ready to drive my way to happiness once more.

While I had her on the phone, I asked the customer rep where I needed to go to make my online direct payment thingy. She gave me the web address and instructed me to enter my username and password and it was pretty much self-explanatory from there. I found the web-page with no problem, but I had no idea what my username or password was. The customer rep told me that it took a couple of days for the administrative people at the gas card company to set up a username and password and they would send it to my e-mail address. Great, just great, now I'm back to where I started...no more gas, buddy.

"Hang on just a moment, sir," the customer rep said. "I'm looking at your company history here and it shows that your username and password were assigned when you opened the account. That information was e-mailed to you on....Feb. 20."

I clicked on my e-mail program and started scanning through the past messages. (I do love having a fast internet connection.) Six pages of e-mails later and I hadn't seen anything from the gas card company. (One of these days I'm gonna forward all of those jokes to those on my list...really, I am.)

I admitted to the customer rep that I had no record of my username or my password. She said that she could contact someone in administration and have them give me a call and they could give me that information. Yes! I'm making progress now!

It must be a long way to the administrative department because it took them an hour to call me back. The admin gal was very nice and said that she'd be happy to help me with my username and password, but first I would have to provide some information to prove I was who I said I was. That's cool, I know all about me, so no problem. Customer number, account number on my gas card, business name and address were all easily answered. One last thing...she'd have to call me back on the number listed for the company as the "contact" number. Uhhh, you called me on that number, I thought, but what the heck. She called right back and told me the username and a new, temporary password that I would have to change as soon as I logged on. The username and password would also be sent to my e-mail address. (I still haven't seen that e-mail).

I logged on and changed my password (it ain't easy dreaming up an acceptable password on the spot so it took a little while before I was completely logged on). I easily found the correct link to enter the bank information to get the transfer set up. But...then I had to provide all of my banking information to facilitate the transfer. That required a call to my bank, which is another short story and won't be told at this time.

With all information provided and the transfer set up, I was ready to make my payment. I clicked on the "record transfer information" button and waited. Nothing happened. I clicked on the button again, and a "change banking information" screen appeared. NO!!!!

I clicked my way back to the set up transfer screen and clicked timidly on the button to record my transaction and hoped it would go thru and only go thru once, since I had tried it once before. A few breathless moments passed and, finally, the 'transaction recorded' page appeared. Thank goodness. And it had only taken me an hour and a half.

Tuesday morning I checked with my online banking account and found no record of a payment to my gas card company. I logged in to the gas card online account and it showed that the payment had been accepted, but that only indicated that the transaction had been initiated, not that payment had been received. Great. Now I get to stress about whether or not the payment actually went thru. My ulcers are doing just fine, thank you. But...my gas card was accepted when I went to the station to fill up. I'll take that as a good sign.

The rest of the day went pretty much the same...lots of time spent accomplishing nothing. Tuesday was the same, which doesn't surprise me, since "Tuesday" is a word which loosely translated means, "end of Monday".

Now, it has gotten to be very late. I'm hoping that Monday is finally over and I can actually get something done tomorrow. It's "hump day"...the rest of the week should be downhill.

I'll wait till the end of the song and then..it's off to shower and then to bed. Rest well.

Good night