But I thought the Internet was supposed to move quickly...

I've been noticing some suspect fees on my credit card's online banking activity, so I decided to e-mail them about why I'm being charged. Had it been a flat fee, I would have owed it to some Existence Fee that I forgot about or missed in the fine print, but I thought I'd bug the customer service people about it anyway just to see whether there was a way I could avoid it.

I composed a quaint message describing the fee that I was issued twice but that I was confused because it was a different amount each time and could someone please explain what this means. The fee's description in my account, of course, reads "Other."

The response was equally quaint but basically said I am an idiot because it's a finance charge for not paying my bill in full each month. But I've been under the impression that I have, in fact, been paying my bill in full each month, so I was rather surprised to learn that such a fee was being charged.

In general I haven't been too happy with how slowly their online banking system posts transactions or statements (namely, processing bill payments or even processing a regular charge), but didn't realize until now that I was being charged for essentially relying on their pedestrian services to tell me what I owe each month.

So I sent them this message in response:

Thank you for clarifying. Do you think it would be possible for your online banking services to accurately calculate my balance due on at least a weekly basis, that I may have the opportunity to pay my balance in full?

All this time I've been under the impression online banking was more convenient than keeping a paper record of every transaction completed, but it turns out that with a several-day turnaround on posting transactions, I'd be better off writing checks.

Maybe I've just been in a bad mood lately, or maybe I dumbly expect huge corporations to have greater means with which to provide customer service, but I don't know that my message was quite terse enough to gain a sufficient response. We'll see how it goes.