A Petty, Pointless Rant By An Ungrateful Daughter

On Monday I received a notice from my parents’ cable company demanding a payment of $199.73 by October 4, or else my parents’ cable and high-speed internet service would be cut off.

Before I go on about this recent incident, I’m going to unload on my parents now. I feel terrible bad-mouthing my parents in a public forum but I am adequately pissed off that I’m going to do it anyways.

About 7 years ago, my father got laid off. Fortunately, he was 65 so he already qualified for Medicare and Social Security. However, this left my mother uninsured and my father could not care less. With my insistence, my older sister, my parents and I agreed to split my mother’s private health insurance premium equally 3-ways. The deal required me to “front” my parents’ share and they would reimburse me.

Initially, the premiums weren’t that bad. But by 2006, the premium cost nearly $600/month, which meant I was fronting approx. $400/month (including my parents’ share) plus $80/month for my parents’ cable bill. (Another long story short: I previously offered to pay $40/month for my parents' cable bill after my dad, in a dementia-episode, declared he was no longer going to pay for cable TV. I offered to do this in lieu of giving them birthday/mother's day/father's day/Christmas gifts .)

In late 2006, my parents stopped reimbursing me. When I asked for reimbursement, my mother asked that I continue to cover their share for a while until the currency market improved. (My father receives a pension from a foreign company in that country’s currency.) She also mentioned they were having difficulty making ends meet because of the currency market fluctuations.

What was I supposed to do? Stop paying my mom’s health insurance? No. I stopped paying the cable bill. (Okay, I admit this was really passive-aggressive.) My parents took over the cable bill via automatic credit card payments but neglected to change the mailing address.

By early 2007, my parents owed me $1,000 and I was digging myself deeper and deeper into debt trying to make MY ends meet. (At the time, I only had $233 in my savings!)

Eventually, my sister intervened and convinced my parents to reimburse me immediately regardless of currency market conditions. My parents paid me back in full, but this incident left a bitter aftertaste. (FYI: My mom now qualifies for Medicare. Yeay! No more health care premium payments for me!)

Going back to the most recent incident, I called my mother and asked why she hadn’t paid for the cable service and she said, “We never got a bill!” (Grrrrrrr.) I then inquired why her credit card wasn’t charged and she said she cancelled the automatic bill pay service because it cost an extra $7/month, which didn’t sound right. When I told my mother the outstanding amount was $199.73, my mother asked that I cover the amount and promised she would reimburse me. This request made my blood boil because my parents don’t ever seem to take responsibility for their finances.

I immediately called the cable company and requested a change in the billing address. I inquired about the purported $7/month charge and was advised that they don’t charge for recurring credit card payments. I then set up an online account so that my parents (read: I) can access their bills online.

Surely enough, their bills do not reflect an additional $7/month charge for the automatic bill pay service. But my mother insists the charges appear on her credit card bill.

In the end, I paid the $199.73. I told my mother that since I intended to give my mom and dad $100/each for their birthdays in October, they should consider this their birthday gifts. My mother gratefully accepted.

I really don’t want to bother further with this incident but I do wonder why my parents were charged $7/month on their credit cards. Should I investigate further or should I ignore it and just let my parents handle it themselves (which they probably won’t)? I really, really, really want to put this behind me, though.