I heard a story a while ago and I believe it.
It seems a computerized fold, spindle, and mutilation system actually mailed a bill to a credit card holder for the true balance, which was $0.00. The credit card holder did what any rational person would do. He filed the bill and promptly forgot it.
Two weeks later he got a letter from the credit card company saying his payment was past due and asking when payment could be expected. The letter even told the guy a number to call if he had trouble paying the entire balance. He circular-filed it.
Then he got a threat that his credit would be impacted if he didn’t pay, So he wrote a check for $0.00 and mailed it in.
Then the fun began. He got a call from the bank’s VP of IT asking why he’d written a check for $0.00 and sent it in? Apparently some low-level flunky had recorded the payment but it crashed their computer system when the syste tried to process the check. Even better, the system was designed to pick up from the first unprocessed transaction in the event of a crash so when they tried to restart the thing it promptly crashed again.
Apparently it took 4 hours to figure out how to clear that transaction from the queue and re-start the server.
The bank decided not to request payment any more and keep the guy’s credit intact.
Ain’t technology wonderful?
Sounds believable. We are billed about $3.50 a month by Windstream, our former internet/telephone provider, because we kept some email addresses. I send them a check for $12 occasionally and let them bill me negative balances. “Please do not pay!” they say. I suppose writing them a check for -$9.45 would be like dividing by zero.