Lost Mail and Checking, 8 December 2021

In yesterday's mail, I got a repeat bill, a "late" bill.  I checked my records and I had sent a check a month ago (11 Nov), but the vendor has not received my payment as of about 5 December.  I can understand why he might be a little grouchy.  I checked my records, and all the other checks written shortly before and after had cleared the bank, so it looks like Ol' Man Dejoy, the Postmaster, has Done It Again.  After screwing up the USPS, he is now losing mail.  I could pay a few bucks to issue a stop-payment on the lost check, but I am too cheap.   Instead I have sent a replacement check and will be watching should the errant check wander in. 

This is one of the few bills I pay by check.  As this service is ending, I think I have two left that are not in autopay mode.  This gives me a chance to think about checking.  We used to write 10-20 checks a month.  There use to be fleets of small airplanes that would collect and deliver bags of checks to smaller banks in the rural towns.  I used to order checks by the box-full and go through several hundred a year.  And I used to deposit checks received from others.  All that is now gone, or severely reduced.  Of the remaining two checks a month, both could go on autopay, and maybe I should arrange that this afternoon.  There will be the occasional check for donations or large amounts (e.g., buying a new furnace), but I would be down to 10 a year from hundreds a year.  

I could pay the remainder by credit card.  One of the things that gives me pause is that the credit card companies take a cut.  I could have paid the furnace deposit by credit card, but they would have imposed a 3% fee.  I notice in my contributions that the "bank" is taking a fee on the order of 3%, and on the smaller amounts, the "bank" usually sets a floor amount for the minimum fee - often 50 or 75 cents.  When a goup of us would go to lunch and split the check, the bank would get four or five of the 75 cent fees for the one lunch ticket.  That is $3-4 that the restaurant will not get.  There is a similar story at the weekly farmers' market where the little guy, the farmer, loses a buck or so on the deal when you pay by credit card.  With the advent of COVID, everyone avoided the handling of cash and moved quickly to the credit transaction.  In some cases, the farmer took the hit and in other cases, the cost of vegetables went up so that the bankers could collect their fees.  

Instead of turning into a rant, let me simply point out that we should go back to cash for those small transactions.  The bankers are driving much nicer cars than the poor farmers and restauranteurs.