How my woes with the USPS and a stolen check have me welcoming AI
I have been reading about the USPS and have always felt it to be a little unfair. However, when it hits home as it did recently, I find myself jaundiced about the agency.
Apparently, its journey to the post office was the opportunity for someone to steal it, alter it, and cash it. Thankfully our bank was excellent in its response, and we were reimbursed. The bank insisted we get a new checking account. That’s where the fun starts.
We have 11 separate deductions or deposits through that checking account at various times through the month. We are retired so our Social Security plus retirement benefits deposit there. We also have Medicare supplements policy premiums plus other insurance deductions.
Frankly, the checking account is critical to our living. So how hard could it be to call these mega organizations and ask for a change in a critical banking account? Plenty. First, you must put up with all of the voice menus and sub-voice menus trying to get to a person with the voice menu insisting you can resolve this faster by going onto their website for service. Sometimes, the voice menu asks you for identification, so you must enter your name, address, date of birth, last four of your SSN, contract number, policy number, which you can normally get through, but it’s at about that time that you get a spam call on your phone which totally disrupts your data entry and causes you to drop the call.
Where are your grandkids when you need them? But we hang tough to get to a person. Then “Your anticipated wait time is 19 minutes”. We get the customer service representative. Some are very good and have dealt with frustrated baby boomers on these types of issues. However, sometimes you get someone new or in training and you wonder who is helping who.
Invariably, they say they can’t handle this over the phone, so they’re willing to help you with their website. I thought I avoided the website by talking to a human. But the better agents will walk you through when you can make the change yourself. Except if your account is frozen. Frozen? Why frozen?
‘Well obviously, you haven’t used it in a month or so.’ When you sign up for Medicare part D once a year, why would I be going on it every month? So, then you must go to another agent (level II in their lingo) that will help you unlock and talk you through. But sometimes you must physically fill out a form and mail (that was the whole start of the problem) or fax it.
So once the forms arrive in your email, you can fill them out and fax it back. (Thankfully we still have that land line that we pay $15/month from Comcast to fax three times a year). Then the good news that your form will be processed and applied in five to 10 business days. Does it really take a computer five to 10 days to process it?
The lessons learned from this have made me paranoid about ever writing a check again. If you can’t trust the USPS, you almost have to drive to the organization and hand the check to them physically.
Our bank has said they don’t recommend using isolated blue USPS mailboxes. This assumes that the crooks are hitting separate standing mailboxes. What if it is an inside job? Then what? To the extent possible, we use a credit card. However, some organizations won’t take credit cards or insist you pay the transaction fee (2% or 3%). It’s almost getting to the point of carrying around a lot of cash or a debit card.
I have heard too many sorry stories about debit cards, that I don’t want to have that adventure. In short, I see nothing but grand opportunities for AI to totally take over all my financial world, whether I want it to or not.
Michael DeGuire is a retired systems manager in Tallahassee who started his career with 80 column punched cards, not a cell phone.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: How my woes with the USPS and a stolen check have me welcoming AI
