‘It’s just automatic, there’s nothing we can do’

I'm very lucky. Despite what our energetic young bankers-turned-derivative-peddlers have done -- are still doing, that's the amazing part -- to our economy, I still have a job, which means that every month I still sit down and pay my bills.

That means some of the bills get paid about a week after they arrive, while others get paid more like three weeks after they arrive.

Either way, I aim to pay any bill within 21 days. This works out fine for just about everybody. With one exception.

My local phone service is with an outfit called Nevada Telephone, sometimes known as Nevada Utilities Doing Business As Nevada Telephone, and sometimes as Excella Communications.

I received my latest bill from Nevada Telephone on March 19. It had been postmarked March 17. The bill says my $30.69 is "due March 27" -- 10 days after they mailed it; eight days after I received it.

I wrote out the check on Thursday, April 2 -- 16 days after this bill was mailed -- but neglected to mail it that day.

On that day, April 2, I received a robot phone call from Nevada Telephone, warning me that my bill was overdue, that if it wasn't paid within 48 hours my service could be shut off, and that if that happened there would be a re-connection charge.

I mailed the payment on Friday, April 3 -- 17 days after the bill had been mailed; 15 days after it was received.

On Saturday morning, April 4, I received a new robot phone call from Nevada Telephone, or whatever it's now called, informing me my bill had not been paid, and that I was now subject to having my service shut off "within hours."

I dialed the "customer service" number on the bill and began listening to "Mexican Music on Hold." It sounded kind of like Sade in Spanish. Every couple of minutes a robot voice would interrupt the endless music loop to repeat "Please hold, all our customer service dweezils are still busy," or something to that effect. I listened for 10 minutes. For 15 minutes. For 20 minutes.

Finally, after listening to Mexican Music on Hold for more than 30 minutes, and growing just a tad upset, I hung up, opened the phone book to the page that lists all the competing local phone service providers, and called Embarq, which has also recently changed its name -- I think they used to be Sprint.

I dialed a local number. A guy answered. I asked what it would cost me to switch over my single-line local residential service to Embarq. The gentleman said they currently had a "special" on such service, at a rate of "29.95 per month, plus tax and surcharges."

"So it'll cost me about what I'm paying now, about 30 dollars a month?" I asked.

"Yes, about that, plus taxes and surcharges," the man said.

"You keep using that phrase," I observed. "What do the taxes and surcharges add up to?"

"About ten dollars a month," he said.

"So you're telling me that when I just asked whether my monthly charge would be 'about 30 dollars a month,' and you said 'Yes, about that,' you actually meant 'about 40 dollars a month'?"

"Yes, about that, plus the $55 switching fee."

Mind you, they don't send some guy out to your house, any more. This is a $55 fee for throwing a switch in their office and entering your name in their billing computer.

But I was angry enough at the Nevada Telephone robot to go for it.

The Embarq guy asked what city I was in, which I thought was strange, since I'd dialed a local number. He asked for my residence address, which I gave him. He asked for my Social Security number ("not to be used for purposes of identification," it says on my card, issued in 1966), my date of birth ... et blooming cetera.

"Wait a minute," says I. "While I'm answering all YOUR questions, you can answer one for me. What's your billing cycle? In other words, after your bill is mailed out, how many days do I have to pay it before it's considered 'past due'? Thirty days?"

"I can't tell you that till I finish the order," he said.

Wow. This guy has a sale in his hands. All he has to do is tell me the one sales point I need to hear, the one improvement over Nevada Telephone's performance that led me to pick up the phone. And he can't do it.

And that was the end of any chance I was going to switch my service to Embarq.

Finally, more than an hour later, I got through to a nice young lady at Nevada Telephone.

"Oh," she said, "that's just our automatic machine. We wish it wouldn't do that, but it's just automatic."

"So my service isn't going to be cut off 'within hours'? You can make a note the check has been mailed?"

"Yes sir, that will be fine. It's just automatic; there's nothing we can do about it."

I fear 97 years of the Federal Reserve usurping the power and duty of Congress to coin our money and set its value, 45 years of an increasingly worthless fiat funny-money dollar that now buys what grandpa could buy for 2 cents, may have created an economic "perfect storm" from which we're not going to fully "recover" until we get a new, silver dollar.

That said, I'm sure there'll be some improvement from the current recession, or depression, or whatever it is, in another year or two.

By that time, a lot of mom-and-pop outfits will have gone under, through no fault of their own.

But I believe some larger industries will also have to be completely re-shaped, if they're to survive. We already know big daily newspapers fall into that category. So pardon me if I wonder whether "copper-wire" phone companies that set their robots to calling and threatening us 16 days after they mail out our bills -- and utility companies that can't even tell you in advance whether their payment terms are "net 30" -- may also end up on the scrap heap of history.

Hey. It's a hard rain gonna fall.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "The Ballad of Carl Drega" and "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com/ and http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/vin/.