Personal essays
No one seems to check anymore
The mistake
About a month ago I got an email from my bank saying that my account was overdrawn.
I checked and it showed that I had paid my mortgage twice. Once for the regular amount and once for a considerably higher amount that had all the regular digits but an extra zero after the first one.
The bank had said that as long as I covered the amount by the end of the day there would be no charge.
So I transferred money from another account and waited for confirmation from the bank that everything was covered and the fee wasn’t charged.
Everything was fine.
Well, you know how it goes. Once everything is fine and the adrenaline subsides, you have a chance to get mad and indignant.
And so I did.
I was sure the mistake was mine - why didn’t the bank catch it.
I’d been paying the same monthly amount for eight months. I’ve been paying roughly that amount for fifteen years.
Shouldn’t they have spotted something that was many times more.
Where the hell is A.I. when you need it?
Another mistake
When you enter the payment amount on some websites you have to enter the decimal point. So, for example I type in “1” then “7” then “.” then “5” then “2” to indicate $17.52.
On other sites, the decimal point is entered for you.
This is initially weird. If I type a “1” then “7” this is seen as $0.17 on this type of entry but $17.00 on the other type.
My bank uses this second approach.
So I entered a bill I needed to pay. Let’s say it was for $17.52. I entered the “1” and the “7” and when I entered the “5” I looked down and say that it had inserted the decimal point and an extra 0.
The amount entered was $10.75. I then entered the “2” and the amount showed as $107.52.
I felt better and I felt worse.
I felt better because the mistake was a problem in the entry somewhere. I hadn’t made a mistake.
I felt worse for the same reason.
I was much more willing to accept an entry problem that was my fault.
Anyway, I corrected this current entry and I’ve been much more careful ever since.
But it made me think about the issue that led to my account being overdrawn.
Checking
I resisted Kim and I combining our finances when we were first married. I always knew about how much money I had and I spent and saved based on that amount.
She was meticulous. She recorded everything. I’m not sure that I wrote down the checks I’d written in the early days.
Years after we’d combined all of our finances she would sit down with every bill when it came and check it carefully.
She would sit for hours on hold with the medical insurance because we’d been billed for a procedure that hadn’t been performed.
She called the vet once because the bill listed something for our dog that was something that was only given to cats.
One of my last memories of her was her going over our credit card bill.
“What’s this?” she called from the dining room.
“What’s what?” I called back.
“What did you spend $34 dollars on in the middle of Pennsylvania last month?”
I thought a minute and then said, “you were with me when I bought it?”
“I never bought anything in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in my life,” she said confidently.
“We bought the EZ Pass,” I said. “It was your idea because they gave us 30% off on the tolls.”
She nodded and moved on to the next charge.
She was just making sure.
Lesson hopefully learned
In thinking back to my original mistake, I think I did catch it and backed up and reentered the amount correctly.
Otherwise, how did I send one payment for exactly the right amount and another payment moments before for a dramatically wrong amount.
We had a crossing guard who would apologize for correcting a parent or child even though they had crossed correctly by saying, “My mistake, your fault.”
I never really understood exactly what he was saying. My takeaway was that he was the kind of guy who could never be wrong but he was offering as much of an apology as he could.
I kind of think the bank issue was similar.
My mistake. Their fault.
Or it could be their mistake. My fault.
It doesn’t really matter.
I need to check more. I need to check before, during, and after.
Oh - My story has an unexpected happy ending.
I got a notice that I was getting a Fed Ex delivery yesterday.
Hmmm. I’m not expecting anything.
Then I got an email from Fed Ex. They’d left a package on my front porch, in the rain, while I was inside.
No doorbell ring - no knock on the door. Just tossed it on my wet porch.
My mistake. Their fault.
In it was a check. No note. Just a check.
The bank that holds my mortgage had figured out that the second payment was an error and sent it back to me.
They didn’t check to see if that’s what I wanted done with it.
No one seems to check anymore.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 227. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe