Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!

So as most of you know, I'm probably world's most anal person about responsibility. I check my bank accounts daily and keep a calendar in my head that rarely fails me. I never run out of clean underwear, and my car always gets its oil changed before the 5,000-mile mark (trust me on this one...experts have said that changing oil every 3,000 anymore might be hard on the engine). I keep my bills in a hanging file, alphabetized. I hardly ever forget a birthday. When I borrow something, I try to return it quickly and in good condition. I have a budget that projects my finances for the next six months. 'So what does this have to do with anything?' I bet you're thinking...well, ask my former insurance company.

On Tuesday in the mail, I received a collections notice. That's right, I got a notice from an agency stating that I had been delinquent in paying my bill for my insurance premium--the one that I canceled two and a half months ago. Well, that's strange...CONSIDERING I NEVER RECEIVED A BILL FROM THE INSURANCE COMPANY TO THIS EFFECT! I was so angry that I dropped the rest of the mail on the middle of the living room floor and went back to my files to see if I had missed something. Nope. Nada. And don't worry, I'm the only one who checks the mail at my house, so it's not as though it was misplaced by someone else or something.

Yesterday I called the collections company. Luckily, they told me that this 'delinquency' hadn't been reported to the credit bureaus yet (seriously, pristine credit here...and I'm kind of proud of it!), so all I had to do was make the payment and everything could be cleared up. I kept trying to explain to the guy that I pay my bills and this was ridiculous of the insurance company. I could tell that he was just trying to appease me, but he didn't really care what I was sputtering out. I really just wanted to rant and say, "Well, we could have saved YOU the trouble had the stupid insurance company sent ME the bill in the effing first place!"

I asked the guy if I could just pay it over the phone with my AMEX. "Oh sure," he said. "It'll just be a $9.95 convenience fee in addition to the $33.40." (Yeah, that's right...my $33 bill got sent to freaking collections. Ugh!) I about tore into him and said, "CONVENIENT FOR WHOM?!" Apart from the fact that my OCD correct English would have been lost on this poor fellow, I didn't want to shoot the messenger. I tried to simmer my anger and asked if I could do it online and not incur the fee. Apparently not. "So how do I do this without having to pay the extra $10?" A check. I can do that.

So a lovely check for $33.40 is headed their way as of today. I swear, if this marrs my credit in the slightest, I will have words to say to both the insurance company and the collections agency. I pay my bills! Had I gotten one, I would have paid it! Especially for the small amount it was!! I'm not exactly sure what lesson to learn from this.