Shelter Insurance, XM Radio, Wells Fargo and my love/hate relationship

I am currently involved in several love/hate relationship with all of these companies. I love them for different reasons, but hate them for a common reason. And that reason is that they want to make it hard for me to give them money. If you can actually believe that. Sounds stupid, right?
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I'll start with XM radio. As you all know, Piccu and I love us some XM radio. It's something that I should have had a long time ago. I have 4 XM radio receivers on my account because some of my friends and family are getting a discount on my account and XM gets its payment through an automatic debit from my bank account. So they don't have any problem with getting their money, but it's completely random to me when they get the money. If I had them send me a bill that adds another $2 to the charge. And that might compound since I have 4 radios on my account, but who knows?

So I guess if I did the math I could somewhat figure out what is going on, but one time I had a random $12 and change taken from my account for what seemed like no reason. When I called them about it, they literally told me that they didn't know what it was for and that I wasn't going to get a bill or be informed about any charges unless I paid for a paper bill to be mailed of which they would be making an extra $1.61 for.

You can pay XM online, but when you do, all it does is pop up a screen for you to enter in all of your information and the amount of money you would like to give them. It doesn't tell you how much you owe, but you can give them as much as you want.

So if anyone affiliated with XM radio is reading this, why not step into the 20th century(yes the 20th) and actually have a computer generate an email to be sent to me informing me of what I'm about to be charged before the charge is made. Everything you do is online so technically your customers are doing all of your work, how about have a computer do some work for customers like myself.
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Wells Fargo is even worse than XM radio in my book because Wells Fargo is probably a multi-billion dollar company. Piccu and I are linked to them through the awesome 2 years of free financing for our 62 inch wide screen HDTV. The payments are cheap, but every time I want to make a payment I have to do a check by phone. While it is certainly more convenient and informative than XM radio, shouldn't Wells Fargo have an online system set up? I mean, it's Wells Fargo for Pete's sake.

When it was time to make the first payment I called up customer service and asked a representative if I could make an online payment and she said that they "were looking into that", but had not implemented it yet. She then asked me if I understood the terms of my agreement and I told her that I most certainly did, but common sense told me that if Pete's Pawn Shop in Podunk, KY could have an online payment option that Wells Fargo could too.
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Shelter Insurance is perhaps the most frustrating because it's a necessity since it is my auto insurance company. My insurance premium is due on Sunday. So yesterday I called up my agent to see if I could do a check over the phone since online payment isn't an option(of course) and every time I drive 30 minutes to his office all he does is run the check through a computer and hand it back to me.

I call and I get the answering machine. I kept calling and calling and I left a message and continued to call all day. Finally, I was ready to leave work and I was prepared to drive 30 minutes to his office, but then realized that if he was there he would have returned my call so he's obviously not there.

I thought maybe I could call the local Shelter Insurance agent in town and see if I could make my payment there. I was told by a friend that it wasn't possible, but it didn't matter because the local agent wasn't in her office either.

So finally I called the home office in Missouri to see if there was some way for me to give them $400. I can't tell you how stupid I felt and how stupid the customer service rep must have felt that I was almost pleading at this point for them to take my money, but there was no way for them to take it. I asked her about a check by phone and again they "are looking into it, but haven't decided if they are going to yet".

At that point I was just angry because if I couldn't pay them my coverage was going to be dropped by Monday all because I couldn't get anyone to take my stinkin' money. How stupid is that? Then she told me that I actually had a 10-day grace period after my deadline before I absolutely had to have the payment in or had to pay the $20 reactivation fee. Which I'm sure they make a lot of money on after this fiasco.

Shelter Insurance, XM Radio and Wells Fargo... Catch up with the times and try to make the receiving of payment a priority. Maybe not the top priority because we wouldn't want to inconvenience you, you morons.

P.S. Also, Blogger.com, how about offering some Mac support, you a-holes. How much do you think it sucks when Safari crashes 80 percent of the time I try to login? Wordpress is looking awfully tempting for the impending podcast.