one monkey typing

Even though when I make a PayPal payment and exceed the balance, it comes from my Ally account, for some reason they keep a SEPARATE rollover account for the debit card, and it was still set to the DFCU account. So a small DigiKey payment and a tank of gas for the van went where I didn't want it, and they won't let me change the account until these payments clear.

I called them and griped about the unnecessary, confusing and seemingly arbitrary separation of the two backups based solely on payment type, but in the end there's not a lot I can do about it other than wait a few days and then change it.

I decided to start using it again since I was using my Amazon Visa card anyway, which pays 1% back but in reward points that I then have to cash in. The PayPal costs the same for the merchant, pays the same 1% but I get it in cash in my account monthly.

My bank (Ally) just sent an email that they now support depositing checks by scanning and uploading images. It's about time, I was wondering what was taking them so long, they are an online bank after all, and some of the others have been doing this for months now. They still don't have an Android app as most of the other online banks do, but that should come in time. This should take a couple of days off the time it takes to get the deposit done and available.

A couple of months ago, I signed up for a PayPal debit card. It pays 1% cash back on purchases. It's supposed to credit into the account on the 1st of every month, but I hadn't seen any for 2 months so I called them last night. Turns out you have to specifically go in and link the PayPal account to your eBay account, and then "sign up" for cash back, which just involves clicking the "sign up" button. I never received this info because my PayPal and eBay accounts have been linked for many years, and there's a hole in the system where it only guides you to the sign up button as part of the linking process, which I didn't get prompted to do.

So I signed up but assumed that I'd just missed out on 2 months worth of cash back, but when I mentioned it, the support guy volunteered "Hey, when I get a chance later this evening I'll go back through your account at least since Dec 1 and figure out what you would have made, and credit that to your account. I was surprised, they definitely didn't have to do that. I mean, my bad for not A) reading the fine print and B) checking on it sooner.

This morning, an even bigger surprise. It looks like he just credited my account $50. I definitely did not charge $5000 on my card in the last two months; maybe $500. A nice round number like that probably indicates that he didn't have time to do it and just plugged in the number that he had authorization to do. No complaints here.

I'm also pleasantly surprised by the online banking support that I've received since getting the accounts back in November. With a sample of a couple of calls each, both PayPal and Ally have had a human on the phone within about 30 seconds of me calling them, in both cases without significant hassle with automated systems. They're the antithesis of cable company phone support, where every call to them is a 10 minute exercise in trying to manipulate the phone system into putting you through to a human, and then a 20 minute wait on hold where you stand a 1 in 3 chance of getting disconnected before someone picks up.

I've been wondering why I haven't been getting the Amazon $25 gift certificates for a while. I used to get them automatically whenever my "points" went over 2500 (points are a penny worth of reward).

I was reading to the bottom of my statement today, down in all the junk at the bottom, and apparently they transitioned it into a unified rewards system with all kinds of gift cards and crap. You have to go to the site and order what you want. I'm sure they sent me an "important letter about changes to your account" at some point...

I went there expecting to order up Amazon discount codes, and woo hoo, one of the items is "$50 off your account balance" for 5000 points. Well, no brainer there. Gimme a couple of those. Yeah, I had over $120 in rewards saved up. I THOUGHT it had been a while since I saw one of those letters.

With that on the menu, I don't know why you'd want to order anything else. I mean, why get a $50 Applebee's gift certificate instead of just using your card (and ringing up even MORE reward points in the process) then use that to pay it off? I guess if you were going to use the Applebee's (or whatever, they have lots of companies) card as a gift, it might make sense.

Well, it pays for the shock absorbers for the van anyway, and a little bit on the inspection at the dealer. Better than a poke in the eye.