The pits, the shits, the irrits

Banking and paying bills here is the pits. The absolute pits. There's no BPAY: there's a couple of different EFT systems that different companies and financial institutions support. Our utilities companies charge extra fees if you pay online anyway. They prefer cheques! And they include an addressed envelope with their bill but you have to fork out for a stamp.

The online payment screens for the credit card, bank and utility firms are shockingly badly designed and not processed real time. So if you make a data entry error - type in an account number that has too many characters, for example or try and pay with an account and there is insufficient funds - instead of coming back with a 'there were too many numbers entered' message or an 'insufficient funds' message it gives you an an approved status and a reference number and says you've paid, until you get a letter in the mail three days later saying something went wrong and you've been charged a whole bunch of fees.

The lack of real time confirmation means that you can go over your limit or make other errors without any alarm bells going off until days later when they've processed your transactions and realise you've spent too much or entered something wrong. Then they slap you with more fees.

I can't believe how bad it is. I can't believe that a snail mail letter gets sent to deal with payment problems, when they have my email and multiple telephone numbers and every error results in multiple fees. They can call me to tell me I have an unrequested credit limit increase but unusual activity on my account just slips by. Its such bad service I'm livid.

Contrast that with ANZ who called me less than 4 hours after I'd splashed out and bought some airfares, to check the transaction was legit. Or with NAB who called me to check the date I had written was correct because they thought it was a bit odd. Australian banking is so much more sophisticated and human that I can't wait to rid myself of these dickensian financial institutions and their ridiculous check books and shite online capabilities.

Its like banking in 1988!

Aaarrrggghhhh.