Monday: at least they're free

Last Saturday I ran out of checks. Now usually I don't use many checks, averaging probably about four per month. But this particular Saturday I needed five checks. I paid the one bill and wrote one small check before realizing there were no more in the check book. Bother. It became a time to clean out my drawer as I threw away some empty check boxes along with some check boxes of accounts long closed. However, none of the current bank checks showed themselves.

Fine, I'll order more checks, if you insist. Last time I thought they were absurdly expensive for plain bank checks, but what can I do. Hey, two clicks on the bank website and they're ordered. Well, at least that was easy.

Fast forward 8 days. I log onto the bank website and happen to notice a little icon that says I have mail. After contemplating not clicking it - because let's face it, sometimes they send me notices that I don't care about - I click it thinking maybe it will tell me when my checks shipped.

The email told me my checks didn't ship because blah blah blah.

What?!? They didn't ship? And they didn't send me a little email reminder saying that I had a secure email from them? I find it absurd. While the remaining three checks can in fact wait 7-10 more business days, there are plenty of cases where this wouldn't be the case.

Sure, maybe if it was that important I would have checked to make sure they shipped earlier. Or remembered to order checks. But this meant I had to make a phone call...and I hate making phone calls.

But at least the checks that are coming are free. And they're blue.