Mighty Bargain Hunter

Reminders for your bills that you can’t put on auto-pay

March 20th, 2008 | by mbhunter |

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Automatic bill payment has certainly made our lives easier, but some places still aren’t on board yet.  Our county government isn’t the only institution that has a relatively archaic method for collecting taxes and fees, but it’s the big one we deal with. Property taxes, licenses, water bills, dog licenses, etc., cannot be put on auto-pay. Credit cards are accepted, but only with a convenience fee (which is in violation of Visa’s merchant agreement for the rest of us but not for governments). Every tax and every fee has a late fee as early as the first day past due.

What’s more, payment is still expected on time even if they screw up and don’t send us a bill! This is bothersome; not only do I have to remember to pay on time, but I have to remember to check for the bill, too.

Fortunately, the county prints up a schedule of when things are due for the year, all on one sheet. This helps a little bit, since now we know when to start looking for bills. Even if we don’t receive the bills, we can enter reminders in IWantSandy.com to fire off a couple of weeks before the bills are due as a backup. When the reminders arrive in our e-mail, if we haven’t received the bill yet, we’ll know to call up the county to see what’s going on.

I’ve just started to play with IWantSandy and it looks really cool.  The e-mail interface is intuitive and easy to use.  And, it’s free!  (Guys: Just be sure to tell your wife/fiancee/SO about Sandy before they find out on their own.)

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