Thousands Of Americans Unable To Pay Monthly Rent Following RentCafe Website Crash. How I yearn for the good ol’ days of snail-mail and checkbooks. Like any of these brash new-age startups, they seem to be a good thing – till they’re not. Till they crash and leave you hangin’ out to dry, like all the folks in the linked article. Gettin’ all your bills, and payin’ for everything online isn’t far behind. Any of this digital stuff falls into that category. Take the other day for example. Verizon suffered a nationwide randomized failure, which made my cell phone useless and lasted almost all day before they finally figured out what was wrong and fixed it. I had to use our VOIP home phone in its absense. That still relies on the internet, but in this case served as a redundant backup, and at least I could communicate.