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The Price of Ignoring Reminders

April 17th, 2008 at 02:35 am

I am a library donor. Not of my free will, unfortunately, but due to the copious amounts of books that I tend to keep checked out ( at least 10 -15+ at any given time), when I forget to renew my books, it is a costly mistake.

So after the last time where I had to part with $15, I set upon a fool proof way of never paying late fees again. Yep - foolproof.

I set up a reminder with yahoo calendar to perpetually remind me to renew my library books every Friday. I have it also set at work in my Outlook. So every Thursday night I get my first reminder email. Then several times on Friday I get a reminder popup at work.

Foolproof, right?

Apparantaly not.

This past Friday, despite all the reminders to check my library books return time, I didn't do it. Yesterday I went into my account to look for a book, and realized quickly that I was going to need to make a trip to the library.

So, today after work (and my workout) I stopped by to find out what the damage was. $30.50 UGH! Thankfully they take credit cards, so I was able to earn some points (plus I only had maybe $2 cash on me.)

An expensive lesson reminding me to NOT ignore my reminders!

7 Responses to “The Price of Ignoring Reminders”

  1. creditcardfree Says:
    1208396364

    Yikes! That's expensive. How long does the library let you check them out before they charge you?

  2. frugaltexan75 Says:
    1208400118

    You can check out books for up to 3 weeks at a time -- but you can renew them online, via phone, or by bringing them back to the library as many times as you want (unless someone has put it on hold.)

    They start charging the day after it is due. All of my books were due on the 11th. So they were 5 days overdue x 18 books (I think).

  3. Petunia Says:
    1208400800

    Ouch! I've had similar things happen. My main library doesn't charge fines (just freezes your account if you're too overdue), but the other two libraries I use do. For the life of me I can't return them on time to library number 2. Once you get in the habit of ignoring the reminders it's hard to change it!

  4. boomeyers Says:
    1208405280

    Thrifty Ray and I were just lamenting about this over on her blog. I look at it as a raise for the librarians!

  5. Thrifty Ray Says:
    1208409075

    yes we were boo! I guess if I have to pay a fee, the library is the place I prefer to pay it. My fees sound similar to yours this week Laura!!

  6. clubneary Says:
    1208432735

    Can your library send you an email reminder a few days before the due date? I used to be horrible at returning books to the library but signed up for their email service and it has helped a lot. I have the email sent to my work email and then print it out as soon as I get it and go home and collect the books. If I forget to do it the day I get the email it's OK b/c they give me about 4 days notice. My last overdue charge was $13.50 and I swore I would try to do better Smile Look into the email reminder, couldn't hurt.

  7. frugaltexan75 Says:
    1208433147

    Thanks for your commiseration everybody. Hopefully this will be painful enough (in my wallet) to make sure I don't ignore my reminders anymore. Rolleyes
    clubneary,
    As far as I know they don't have anything like that, but I will check into it.

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