A+++++++++++++++++
Make 'em work for it!

Wow - most creative indeed. I wonder if the person who processed the checks had a good laugh that day.

I suspect that this took the same amount of time as sitting on the phone, but I'm 100% certain that it was more fun.

Yahoo! Way to torture the guy who has to cash those checks and enter them.

Made my day.
I am also an (un)fortunate card holder/slave of amex, never had an issue like this but the bastards really like to push me on the payment due date.

BTW, you owe me a good keyboard, reading this made me spit my coke all over it, else i risked drowning on it while trying to laugh. It also didnt help the fact that it was in front of 5 of my coworkers. Those BASTARDS are merciless with the ribbing on any of us.

Wish I had thought of this. Last year I keep getting bills for ever increasing late penalty charges from the Veterans Administration, even though I had paid the original bill in full. At first it was only a few cents, but it continued to mount into the couple of dollars range while I sent them messages to the effect that I had paid on time and their late charges were bogus (and never received a single reply). Finally gave up and sent them a check for a couple of dollars, before they decided to put a lien on my house or some such draconian tactic. Wish I had thought of this. Though at the price of checks these days, it's going to end up costing a bundle to do something like that just to gain some trifling satisfaction.

I remember once AMEX sent me a bill with a zero balance, so I sent them a check for zero. They sent back note that said the payment was problematic or something. Later bills for zero would say not to send payment, and I guess if there's no use and no balance, they don't send anything as seldom use it and only get something from them when there is some sort of account change they have to notify me of.

It probably would have been worth calling them to see what they say.

This month, Discover Card sent me a bill for the interest on all of the charges from last month because I was accidentally short $0.17. I called and explained the problem, and they happily waived the charges.

Also, those checks were run via ACH, so you're forgetting that they probably paid a significant amount of money to cash each cheque too (like maybe $0.20/transaction).

I'm betting a picture of the checks is posted in their break room..

I'm not sure I really get this. It appears to me, that the OP owed the money and decided to be a prick and make things annoying to everyone involved. Sure, a 19 cent bill seems stupid, and these bills are sent out by computers, not humans that can reason that it cost more to do the transaction than it is worth, BUT Amex has millions of people, and they can't wipe little amounts like this off the books every time.

I like what Bill did. He called Discover Card, spoke with a person, and they waived the charge. That's what any normal person should do. Did the OP feel that he was getting screwed to the point that he should get even? After all, he did owe the money.

Again, I don't get the point. I always want to be fair, whether it's sticking up for the big guys, or sticking up for the little guy. Is everybody here happy because somehow he was able to stick it to the big guys, without regard to right or wrong?

Sure, a 19 cent bill seems stupid, and these bills are sent out by computers, not humans that can reason that it cost more to do the transaction than it is worth

Bad reasoning. Humans programmed those computers and could fix them so that this doesn't happen.

It seems to me that if an Amex rep got a hair up his ass and acted like as much of a douchebag as Smith here (say, by somehow finding a way to send him a separate receipt for each of the checks), the Consumerist editors would be lined up with the heavy lumber to bash the crap out of them.

But Smith here figures 19 cents is too piddling for him to be bothered with, so he throws a tantrum and acts like a child, and his behavior is celebrated? I must have missed the part in the Amex user agreement that says "if your account is billed a very small amount of money, you know, you totally don't have to pay it. Cause that would be lame."

To echo other commenters, why not call the company, Smith? You do understand that billing is automated, right? It's not like some Amex rep was sitting at a desk going, "BWAHAHAHA! We will squeeze Smith for every cent!" I guess it's just easier to call attention to yourself by acting like an asshole than it is to grow up and understand that you live in an imperfect world.

@maestrosteve: way to "rain on the parade" :-(

I had a rant, but you'll miss that point too.

Hey, he paid the bill. What is it to him that the postage on the bill/payments and check processing fees exceeded the amount of the bill? Even without the 7 checks thing, it still probably costs them more than $0.19 to collect something.

Is it so hard to have a threshold where bills are not sent out? I'm not saying round off all bills to the nearest dollar, but at some point it's cheaper to just eat the cost.

[www.maxfreak.com]

Passive Aggressive Much?

Also, Next time, send real origami. Maybe a Starcraft SeigeTank of Checks.

@Mr_D:

Postage to mail out the bill and for him to mail back the payment were both worth more than 19¢.

@Bill:
Discover is awesome for reversing finance charges if you pay the bill in full, even those much higher than a handful of pennies.

Re: not billing for piddling-small amounts: If they had good programmers, companies wouldn't even have to "eat" such small amounts. They could change the $0.19 charge to a class of item that incurs no interest or late fee, but will sit in the account until other transactions build up a high enough balance to generate a bill. To cover the cases in which customers stop using the card altogether or for long periods of time, this new class of transaction could age out and convert to 0 in X months if there are no further transactions on the account. Of course, that would probably confuse someone and make them post to the consumerist about their confusing bill...

I once got a final bill from AT&T for 40¢. When I called to ask them to waive it, they refused, despite the fact that it cost them 37¢ to send me the bill and would cost me another 37¢ to pay it.
I sent them a check for $1, and then called them EVERY DAY asking where my 60¢ refund was. Eventually they sent me back a check for the difference, which I never cashed.
I just relished the idea that they spent so much more than 40¢ to collect on that final bill.

I was at the library this weekend and I had a small overdue fine (.20). I was working on locating change when the librarian said not to bother that it was too small an amount and she had closed out of my account. She suggested, with a smile, that I not bring back the books I was currently borrowing until my overdue account was at least worth a dollar. I confirmed that there was no interest being calculated on .20 (she laughed) and went on my merry way.

"Am I a bad consumer, or just sick of bull hockey?"

Your alright.

@itsgene:

I just closed my account with US Cellular and had an outstanding balance of (iirc) 22 cents for text messaging, and an associated "Satisfied Customer Credit" of 22 cents to close out my account at zero. So at least one company will automatically waive piddly amounts rather than annoy a customer.

Consumer should've instead sent 38 checks for half a cent each

Dont get me wrong ... but this is just pain stupid ... i mean if i would get one of those bills i would just sit down at my computer, pay the bill via e-banking and be done with it in less than a minute. Then grab a cold beer and be happy never to be botherd again... i mean come on.

@Angryrider: you must have a really really light definition of torture.

@maestrosteve: Since they have to mail out bills, at 41 cents a stamp, it makes sense to wipe any under-$0.41 bill off the books. Costs them less. Not to mention the other processing costs (paper, ACH fees, man hours, etc)

I know computers print out these bills, but it would be quite simple to update their software so it will just write off any bill under a certain amount.

I can sympathize with the OP's frustration, but it's not like the CEO is opening the mail. It's very likely that they outsource their payment processing to another company. However, he can take some comfort in knowing that he cost AmEx some extra money, since those companies charge on a per item basis.

@cde: That is amazing, although I'd suggest sending them nothing, and claiming that it's cloaked.

AmEx is certainly entitled to their 19¢, but I wonder what their position would be in the opposite situation.

Last month I was 30 cents short on my water bill since I wrote the check before hand and didn't feel like re-writing it. I later got a disconnect notice since my account was past due. Seriously, it's so stupid.

This would have done absolutely nothing. THe checks would have been unfolded, placed behind the ticket, and scanned through a machine that does such a thing. Actually, 19 checks would have taken more effort.

Even if it had been a pain, you pissed off the low level employee who had to deal with it, not the company who was stupid for billing you. Way to piss on the clerk earning minimum wage.

I have a similar situation with a 7 cent bill. My situation is obviously more complicated as 7 cents is not large enough to send an obnoxious number of checks for different amounts. What to do???

Sorry to say it, but I'm not sure this really did anything. With a large-scale company like American Express, the item processing employees that receives these payments will just unfold all the checks and run them through their "sorter" (or whatever machinery they run all their other checks through) and they won't care how much the checks are for or if they're written to "STUPID BILL" because, well...in all likelihood, the OP sure wasn't the first to put that on a check anyway. If anything, the most that these people will care about is the way the checks were folded up the way they are--they can jam up the machinery that way and get mangled up and stuff.

No...if anything, I'm afraid the OP was just preaching to the choir this way. And the only people the OP might have upset would've been the item processing people who'd have to process these checks and had NOTHING to do, whatsoever, with giving the OP this stupid charge to start with. If you guys want to complain, complain to the right people. Please don't mess with these lower-rung folks who are just doing their jobs.

@surreal: Think about what 7 cents of your time is worth. Remember who is going to have to deal with your "protest." Then just mail them a nickel and 2 pennies and be done with it.

@Roxie: Sounds like you've managed an IP department too. (I beat you to it by a few minutes)

You're not a bad consumer. I had a good laugh over this story.

also I'd like to note Amex also get a bulk shipping rate which amy be discounted over what a person pays.

also to OP way to be a douche. Boo Hoo you got charged interest because of a contract you agreed to to borrow money.

@超外人: srsly. talk about sticks up everyone's butts. it's a funny and cathartic, it's a win win win!

@cde: That's cool, but what is it? Is there a picture anywhere of the original object?

@TehRev: Now you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that things like bills have to be sent at the first class rate (albeit the bulk discount for it), so they're still going to spend a significant amount of the money they're trying to recover to get it back.

This isn't about right or wrong, its about common sense. American Express is probably losing money, once you factor in postage with the operational expense of having the mail sorted and processed. Its absurd and wasteful. Its no big fish, but companies shouldn't waste time and resources on absurdly small bills.

Did you hear the one about the Aggie who got a 19¢ bill from AMEX?

To everyone saying that they should just waive bills of less than xx amount. Follow the logic of this out from the business perspective. If companies start doing this, then you will have a bunch of jerks purposefully underpaying their bills by a small amount. I'm sure the cost of dealing with the few people that want to make a point of the stupidity of a small bill outweighs the costs of dealing with all the jerks who would try to game the system.

In other news, AMEX worker receives painful paper cut while processing insidiously folded checks. Worker vows to get even.

Wait a minute...the OP thinks he WON the battle? EPIC FAIL

When people do this, they do realize that it's some under paid worker who's unpacking their envelopes that hates their job and quite possibly their life?
It's always good to make their lives worse, ey?