Electronic funds transfer in the US, stone age?

"A _few_ months??" Crap. One of my banks has ALL statements available online "instantly" for the last 10 years, and another for 2 years "instantly" with previous statements available the next day for requested months.

My barber is out of luck now since I started clipping hair myself. Just a 1/2" trimmer, takes five minutes. Well, there ain't too much hair to trim. When a friend suggested it I accidentally had the 1/8" insert on there from beard trimming. After the first buzz ... oops ... I couldn't find the "undo" button on the trimmer and had to continue. My wife almost screamed when she saw me emerge from the garage :-)

I am not so enthused about it either anymore. Transferring to Paypal take about a week. I guess they hand-carry each electron.

Now the phone company said they'll only send ebills three months from now. Despite me checking the box not to do so. Great.

In Europe I paid contractors simply by wire transfer. That was the normal way of doing it even in the 80's and before. Gets there in about two minutes. Sometimes seconds. Unlike electronic bill-pay in the US which obviously can take up to a week for whatever reason.

There is a lesson in there somewhere, but I'm not sure even Mark Twain could describe it properly.

How do they send ebills without your cooperation? Not everyone has online banking etc. Did you somehow signup with them with some option and now they've taken away the option?

Yes, for example for the safe desposit box and to deposit checks. They accept them scanned via smart phone but not scanned via computer scanner. Beats me why, makes no sense at all and I am not going to get a smart phone just for that. It is also practical to have an ATM that doesn't sock one with off-network fees and those tend to be at the bank locations.

Online billpay takes a week only when they have to mail a check. When it is electronic they take to banking days because it is going through the same channels as were originally set up for checks, ACH transfers.

Those are statements, usually in PDF form. I want to be able to sort through my financials on the web page the same way I look at mail. I have a stock account where I can view data from 10 years ago. Why can't my bank do that?

They already have this functionality on their web site. They just remove the data after three months or so. They are stuck in the 70s mentality of monthly statements and washing their hands of my business. It just hasn't occurred to them that they can provide data in useful ways rather than just holding your money until you want to spend it.

I believe you can run Android on a raspberry pi and do all the same stuff. A pi with a camera is running about $50 these days.

Won't work. You'd also need an expensive cell plan with data, plus a modem, plus, plus, plus. And I am not going to start a science project for that.

It happens once you pay them online for the first time. Then you'll have to watch out that they don't go totally paperless on you. Unless you want it tht way.

My bank (a CU, really) is over 1000 miles away and I've not been inside a branch for almost 15 years. I've *never* been charged for an ATM fee, thus I use one to get cash every week (just stopped at one fifteen minutes ago). Smart phones are really hany for all sorts of things. I know you don't trust yourself but they really are useful.

I do trust myself :-)

Some day I may get a smart phone. Right now I just don't see the usefulness of it for me personally. I do not have the urge to go on the Internet or check email incessantly. When I am on bike rides I actually enjoy not being tethered. On some mountain bike routes it would not work anyhow for lack of cell towers.

I wonder how they handle the cost. Someone has to pay for postage and for handling yet it doesn't cost me anything.

That's a serious mistake on the part of the banks. Once a trusted account relationship has been established between the receiving accounts of the various utilities and the account of the sender there is no reason to go through all this bureaucracy. Their execs should take a trip to Europe, get a tour of a bank's operations and see how it's done more efficiently.

Or brewing. It's still done the way it was 400 years ago and results taste great. I started it again last year. Some day I'd like to get back to brewing over a wood fire like the Vikings did.

^^ should be 25

You complain that people use their phones in restaurants and cite that as a reason not to have one. The only conclusion one can draw is that you don't trust yourself to be civil.

I didn't think they would be as useful as they are when I got my first one. The application that sold it was the hot spot. It's become indespensible tool because of all the other applications that came along with it.

I do consider it poor style if someone does this at the bar or at the table with a group. If somewhere alone at a table, different thing. Where did I say that this is the reason I don't have a smart phone?

That is a strange way to draw a conclusion. Best not to do that when dealing with engineering stuff.

If I could do quick edits in Eagle schematic, run simple LTSpice sims and do database stuff on them I might consider. Some day.