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Receipt? What Receipt?
Sep. 11th, 2007 12:57 pmI am absolutely terrible at keeping orderly records of financial transactions, both incoming and outgoing. Time and time again I make extra work for myself replacing documents I could and should have kept track of or at least put in something resembling a file.
Exhibit A) Back in June I bought tickets online to Wicked at the Opera House for a performance taking place next week. As of today, the tickets still haven't arrived as promised, and in mounting panic -- they were very expensive -- I knew I had to track them down. I might or might not have printed out the e-receipt, but in either case it was nowhere to be found either in hardcopy or anywhere in my sprawling stable of e-mail accounts. Worse, I couldn't even remember from what online source I bought them, or during which month I bought them. The only way left to track it was to generate cumbersome e-statements from my bank account going back to January 2007 and search them manually. Found it: TicketMaster. Called them: they sent the tix the day I bought them and they must have gotten lost in transit or gotten confused for junk mail at my house and gotten thrown away. TicketMaster will replace them. But that was over 2 hours of hunting, when the process could have taken minutes if I'd kept a paper trail.
Exhibit B) I've been invited to join a class action suit (details in a filtered post) that could yield for me a pleasant lump sum if we win, but in order to come onboard I need to track down copies of some documents from 2004 that any sensible person would have available at their fingertips but that I, of course, don't. I hope I can get them in time because I'd like to participate, but there it is -- I've made more work for myself and other people.
I'm still totally freakin' awesome in other respects, but this is an area that beseeches improvement.
Exhibit A) Back in June I bought tickets online to Wicked at the Opera House for a performance taking place next week. As of today, the tickets still haven't arrived as promised, and in mounting panic -- they were very expensive -- I knew I had to track them down. I might or might not have printed out the e-receipt, but in either case it was nowhere to be found either in hardcopy or anywhere in my sprawling stable of e-mail accounts. Worse, I couldn't even remember from what online source I bought them, or during which month I bought them. The only way left to track it was to generate cumbersome e-statements from my bank account going back to January 2007 and search them manually. Found it: TicketMaster. Called them: they sent the tix the day I bought them and they must have gotten lost in transit or gotten confused for junk mail at my house and gotten thrown away. TicketMaster will replace them. But that was over 2 hours of hunting, when the process could have taken minutes if I'd kept a paper trail.
Exhibit B) I've been invited to join a class action suit (details in a filtered post) that could yield for me a pleasant lump sum if we win, but in order to come onboard I need to track down copies of some documents from 2004 that any sensible person would have available at their fingertips but that I, of course, don't. I hope I can get them in time because I'd like to participate, but there it is -- I've made more work for myself and other people.
I'm still totally freakin' awesome in other respects, but this is an area that beseeches improvement.