Paying bills while cruising

[Default] Thus spake Joseph Coulter :

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:09:49 GMT, JCarnaghie
wrote:

Joseph Coulter wrote:

On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:15:53 -0400, Judy Heuman
wrote:
SNIP

============================================== =================
Judy Heuman

Inefficeint maybe but they aren';t that bad. On the other hand you
could arange to prepay your credit cards. But I would just take the 5
minutes to get the job sone with the ship's internet. Paying bills is
not somehting that I would do at an internet cafe ashore as much as I
like saving mone on internet costs.
Joseph Coulter
Joseph Coulter Cruises and Vacations
www.josephcoulter.com
Dear Joseph,
I believe the "threat" at internet cafes is
really overstated, but you should always be alert.
You are trusting the ship's and the
satellite providers processes when you use the
shipboard internet.
Cheers,
John in LALALand (Hacker's Heaven)
It is indeed a matter of trust. I prefer to think that if my
transaction is comprosmised via say Celebrity's agent that I would be
in better shape than if the trust were to be breached by Sal's pizza
and internet.

I have very little concern with the ship's internet cafe, but ashore
is a different story, especially using one of their stations.
--

- dillon I am not invalid

"Jimmy, I'm sorry your girlfriend turned out
to be a cylon."
-Special Agent Tim McGee, "NCIS"

[Default] Thus spake Judy Heuman :

In the past we have never taken a cruise longer than two weeks and
this was not a problem. But, we are planning a longer cruise for next
year -- a back to back -- taking 27 days plus a few days pre-cruise
and a day or two post-cruise.

I'm thinking ahead and wondering how we will pay the bills that arrive
while we're gone. Some of our bills are automatic payments and they
are no problem. But, I'm concerned about credit cards where the
amount payable is due each month and the credit card companies give
only 2 or 2 1/2 weeks in which to make the payment.

Reading this newsgroup I see quite a few of you have taken longer
holidays and I'd like to know how to solve the problem of paying the
bills while on a cruise. How do can we do this?

Is the only solution to do on-line banking knowing how inefficient the
Internet connections are while on the ship?

I'd appreciate your tips. Thanks.

Judy
================================================= ==============
Judy Heuman

About 60% of our bills can be delivered electronically. We then just
go iin and pay them.

If we were gone that long, we'd have a trusted house/dog sitter who we
would have opening crtical mail and emailing us amounts and dates.

If you don't have a laptop, you can either eBay one or get a netbook.
--

- dillon I am not invalid

"Jimmy, I'm sorry your girlfriend turned out
to be a cylon."
-Special Agent Tim McGee, "NCIS"

On 7/19/09 12:13 AM, in article ,
"Dillon Pyron" wrote:



If you don't have a laptop, you can either eBay one or get a netbook.

Or buy an iPhone or an iPod Touch and use the bank applications such as the
ones provided by Wells Fargo or BofA. Many brokerages also allow you to pay
bills online to preset accounts.

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:09:32 -0400, Rosalie B.
wrote:

Also there's no good way to get mail on a cruise that I've found.

I use a program called Agent, by ForteInc, and have a netbook that is
set up with the same setup I have on my desktop. The only difference
is that I have the Agent on the netbook set up to leave a copy of the
emails on the host site, while on the desktop I have it set up to
remove the emails from the host site when downloaded.

As we travel, be it into a motel with wifi or a ship, I simply start
up the netbook and download the emails to it. If on a ship, the best
time is about 3AM in the morning, when everyone is asleep and the WiFi
is basically not being used by very many people on the ship. Download
is really fast then. In the evening after dinner the WiFi can be
really slow, due to the difference in demand levels.

Anyway, I have no problem with email that way...

FWIW
RsH

In this case, think Canadian Banks... as we live in Canada. The Six
big banks are CIBC, BMO, ScotiaBank, RoyalBank, National Bank and
TD/Canada Trust... Some are VISA, some are MasterCard, but sometime
soon all are likely to be offering both.

RsH
------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:30:21 +0200, peter
wrote:

On 7/19/09 12:13 AM, in article ,
"Dillon Pyron" wrote:



If you don't have a laptop, you can either eBay one or get a netbook.

Or buy an iPhone or an iPod Touch and use the bank applications such as the
ones provided by Wells Fargo or BofA. Many brokerages also allow you to pay
bills online to preset accounts.

RsH wrote:

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:09:32 -0400, Rosalie B.
wrote:

Also there's no good way to get mail on a cruise that I've found.

I use a program called Agent, by ForteInc, and have a netbook that is

I use Agent also very much the same as you do - but I was referring to
snail mail and not email.

set up with the same setup I have on my desktop. The only difference
is that I have the Agent on the netbook set up to leave a copy of the
emails on the host site, while on the desktop I have it set up to
remove the emails from the host site when downloaded.

As we travel, be it into a motel with wifi or a ship, I simply start
up the netbook and download the emails to it. If on a ship, the best
time is about 3AM in the morning, when everyone is asleep and the WiFi
is basically not being used by very many people on the ship. Download
is really fast then. In the evening after dinner the WiFi can be
really slow, due to the difference in demand levels.

Anyway, I have no problem with email that way...

FWIW
RsH

Rosalie B. wrote:
Also there's no good way to get mail on a cruise that I've found.



If you really need your mail, just have your family scan it, turn it
into a PDF and email it to you. Of course, that is time consuming and,
if they do too high a resolution on the scan, the file can be huge.

For me, those Victoria Secret catalogs can just wait until I get home! ;-)


--
Ray Contreras
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
http://www.CompressorStuff.com
http://www.rayzplace.com

[Default] Thus spake Ray Goldenberg :

On Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:09:32 -0400, Rosalie B.
wrote:

I had forgotten about this - our credit union used to charge us a
small amount for the on-line bill paying, but it is now free. The
people I know that use a service do pay a fee for it.

Hi Everyone,

The difference between on-line bill paying through your bank/credit
union and a bill paying service like Paytrust is that the bill paying
service will receive, scan, and retain your bills. I have found this
to be extremely helpful. YMMV

Best regards,
Ray

Our brokerage offers "electronic delivery" of many bills. These are
basically a form of email. According to the Billpay person I talked
to there are two parts to the bil. A secure portion that has the
charges, etc and an open portion that's available to Billpay. You can
say "pay this sucker x days before it's due" or you can look at the
bill and decide when to pay. You can also set up automatic, same
amount every month for things like insurance and mortgage

But we have bills that don't work that way. Right now we only take 7
night cruises, so we're in the clear. If they go longer, we'll
probably have Monica open them for us an email/text us. But many of
those will/are pusing us go with an "email reminder, go look on our
secured site" type of billing. And these give us an additional two to
three days, since we get the reminder the day the bill is mailed.

--

- dillon I am not invalid

"Jimmy, I'm sorry your girlfriend turned out
to be a cylon."
-Special Agent Tim McGee, "NCIS"

[Default] Thus spake RayC :

Rosalie B. wrote:
Also there's no good way to get mail on a cruise that I've found.



If you really need your mail, just have your family scan it, turn it
into a PDF and email it to you. Of course, that is time consuming and,
if they do too high a resolution on the scan, the file can be huge.

If they can see the bill, why not just email/text the amount due. They
can scan at crap resolution (if they're scanning and emailing, they
hopefully know how to do it right) and email later.


For me, those Victoria Secret catalogs can just wait until I get home! ;-)

Is there any way to tell USPS to just hold the Huslter? Of course, it
may be "well read" by the time I get home. :-0


--

- dillon I am not invalid

"Jimmy, I'm sorry your girlfriend turned out
to be a cylon."
-Special Agent Tim McGee, "NCIS"

[Default] Thus spake peter :

On 7/19/09 12:13 AM, in article ,
"Dillon Pyron" wrote:



If you don't have a laptop, you can either eBay one or get a netbook.

Or buy an iPhone or an iPod Touch and use the bank applications such as the
ones provided by Wells Fargo or BofA. Many brokerages also allow you to pay
bills online to preset accounts.

Yup. We've had ours for a little over a month. The data plan makes
email and web essentially "free" once we go beyond about 3 MB, which
is easy to do if you know it's "free".

But onboard it's still $.55 a minute, so we might hold off a tad bit.
--

- dillon I am not invalid

"Jimmy, I'm sorry your girlfriend turned out
to be a cylon."
-Special Agent Tim McGee, "NCIS"