In the department of ridiculously small amounts of money, I just received a check - in an envelope, by first class mail - for the total amount of zero and 07/100 dollars. Yes, seven cents.
Some mumbo-jumbo in connection with our mortgage refinancing had caused a credit of seven cents to appear in our long-dormant zero balance HELOC account. I wrote it off in my head, thinking seven cents wasn't worth any attention (though I did encourage my eight year old to pick up a penny in a parking lot yesterday, but then, she's eight and most of her net worth is in pennies), and being not quite sure that they really owed that money to me (there hadn't been any money in the account at the beginning of the refinance process). That Chase felt they had to clear the account by mailing me a check for seven cents astonishes me - not least of which is that Chase knows I have a Chase mortgage and a Chase checking account. Wouldn't it have been simpler and cheaper for them to have done a book transfer into one of those accounts? Besides the obvious - postage - how much did it cost for them to issue the check and clear it at the other end?
A little common sense might go a long way in these matters of dollars and cents.
02 July 2012
Common Sense, Common Cents
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5 comments:
I've had checks like that. They can't combine the accounts because it's two different systems, blah blah blah.
My employer overpaid me last year. The process of repaying the money and filing the associated paperwork ate more hours (thus costing my employer more) than the amount of the check. This, as they say, is why we lost the empire.
The only way to make this seven cents (and the ridiculous cost and effort behind it) less nonsensical is to milk it for all the bang you can. Could you get seven gumballs out of it? Maybe loiter in Target near the check-outs until someone starts scrounging around for a few cents in his/her pockets? If there are train tracks nearby, take your daughter to them and put those pennies on the rails. They flatten beautifully.
Good lord.
Do not ever look to Chase for common sense solutions.
oy.
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