Tuesday 10 April 2012

Once A Month At A Machine

How do you pay your bills?

Just earlier, I was at an AXS machine slipping and sliding my credit and ATM cards, and keying in bill account numbers. A few minutes and it's done. I do this once a month, near my home.

I used to have a number of paper bills that I would scan at the AXS device. I got most of them, the Singtel, Starhub, M1 (Goodness, I have relationships with all 3 telcos) and the Town Council bills put onto my Citibank credit card. They've got a smart One Bill service that's win-win for me, with less messing about, and for them, after all it's revenue too. The only friggin bill that's out of this loop is the utility one. Apparently I can only set up a direct debit GIRO withdrawal for that, which I refuse to do. The Citibank One Bill still gets me points you see.

I did pay through Internet banking services before but once the DBS system miscounted a transaction and I lost some cents. I have been wary since though I go back to it now and then.

One Bill is one reason why I use only one credit card. I also don't want to mess around with multiple bills each month, too many numbers and costs to keep track of. So I keep the relationships as simple as possible. I am a downer for cold call credit card salespeople. I stop them in their opening spiel, tell them I'm not keen, that i have only one card I use and go back to work. No matter how exclusive the damn offer is. Same thing for the floating zombies at train stations trying to plug me their latest greatest no-fees-for-a-lifetime cards. Yeah right.

Well that's mundane enough for a Tuesday. Maybe Citibank should give me points for selling their services.

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