Automate bill payment? Pros/Cons?

[OldShooter]

"More moneys been stolen/misappropiated since the inception of the web/net(67'iirc) than has been stolen since the beginning of money itself."

I believe it. I forget where I heard it. I do not know whom or what various search engines attribute the quote to either. ...

Quite funny. No way to validate that, as it is a comparison of two unknowable numbers. Even if the numbers were knowable and the statement was true (quite a stretch of course) the relevance to the thread topic is questionable.

 

[harley]

In my previous life, I was involved in computer security...I DO NOT AUTOPAY.

I do get electronic bills for EVERYTHING, and use my bank's BILL PAY to schedule the amount and the date. I also pay by CC if no fees are involved and I get cash back on my card.

I do not want any computer to take money directly from my checking account unless I press the button...computers make mistakes and can make foolish choices.

Two months ago, I had an 11 cent refund mailed to me using a 48 cent stamp...maybe when I get older, I will change my thinking, but right now I do not like AUTOPAY.

I was also a cybersecurity professional, but I use autopay all the time. One difference is that I autopay from my credit card. Then if there's any issue I can get them involved. But also I can't imagine why anyone would let a company debit their account (or however you do it) when you can get the points from paying it with your credit card. I get a lot of free to me money that way.

I do tend to pay my credit cards online but manually from my bank account. I am going through the statement to check it for errors anyway, so I just do the payment at that point. I've considered putting them on autopay too, so that if I get incapacitated DW won't have to deal with that. It's on the list. The long, long, list of things I've got to get around to.

 

[Cobra9777]

...I can't imagine why anyone would let a company debit their account (or however you do it) when you can get the points from paying it with your credit card...

We use a cash-back CC for most bills. But I posted earlier why we use bank debit in two cases...

...DW and I both have heavily-subsidized retiree health insurance from our prior employers. The only option for paying the monthly premium is automatic bank draft. We're certainly not going to refuse health insurance based on concerns about the bank draft.

The way I see it, we trusted them for decades with our bank info for direct deposit of our paychecks. So we trust them now to pull the health insurance payment. Never a problem after 35-40 years.

Also, we currently auto-pay 3 CCs with bank draft, as that is the only option right now for automating those CC payments. As soon as Fidelity gets their eBill system back up, I'll switch those to eBill, which is an automated "push-pay" system.

 

[disneysteve]

But also I can't imagine why anyone would let a company debit their account (or however you do it) when you can get the points from paying it with your credit card. I get a lot of free to me money that way.

Not all bills accept credit cards or if they do they charge a fee. The rewards aren’t worth it if you have to pay a 3% fee to use the card. We use a credit card for everything we can. Anything else goes through the checking account.

 

[scrabbler1]

Not all bills accept credit cards or if they do they charge a fee. The rewards aren’t worth it if you have to pay a 3% fee to use the card. We use a credit card for everything we can. Anything else goes through the checking account.

+1.

 

[CDRE]

Not all bills accept credit cards or if they do they charge a fee. The rewards aren’t worth it if you have to pay a 3% fee to use the card. We use a credit card for everything we can. Anything else goes through the checking account.

+2

 

[mickeyd]

All of our recurring bills that accept it have been on robo-pay for many years. No problems. No errors.

It's a wonderful way to make life easier/better.

 

[scrabbler1]

State Farm puts a note in its premium notices that if you mail them a paper check, they can use it to create an ACH payment without processing a paper check. This blurs the distinction between a paper check and an ACH payment.

 

[ocean view]

Not all bills accept credit cards or if they do they charge a fee. The rewards aren’t worth it if you have to pay a 3% fee to use the card. We use a credit card for everything we can. Anything else goes through the checking account.

My kid’s college tuition, my property tax payment and my state income tax estimates are three situations where cc payments are allowed, but the added cc fee is greater than my cc reward so I allow them to reach into my account and withdraw their payment. For each of these, I am initiating the transaction, they do not have blanket authorization to auto pay all bills.

 

[WWDog]

Only one thing is on autopay, the wife's life insurance. I don't trust the system. I pay each bill by check and try to take the payment to the post office and put inside in the outgoing box. I don't have any connections between any of my bills and the bank account. I used to work in an information warfare battle lab as a consultant and don't trust any of it after what I have seen that can be done. I don't even connect to the bank with my computer and if I do anything financially on my computer such as track financials, I block all connections first, then reboot after I disconnect the drive that holds financial files.

 

[Sunset]

Only one thing is on autopay, the wife's life insurance. I don't trust the system. I pay each bill by check and try to take the payment to the post office and put inside in the outgoing box. I don't have any connections between any of my bills and the bank account. I used to work in an information warfare battle lab as a consultant and don't trust any of it after what I have seen that can be done. I don't even connect to the bank with my computer and if I do anything financially on my computer such as track financials, I block all connections first, then reboot after I disconnect the drive that holds financial files.

By merely giving the billing company your check, you have given them all the information needed to debit your bank account electronically.

To be truly separate, you need to withdraw cash from the bank and take it to the billing company to pay the bill, and get a receipt for proof of payment.

 

[Nick12]

By merely giving the billing company your check, you have given them all the information needed to debit your bank account electronically.

To be truly separate, you need to withdraw cash from the bank and take it to the billing company to pay the bill, and get a receipt for proof of payment.

That's true but I still pay by check at times even though many of my bills are autopay. I was throwing out old things and I came across an old ATM debit card from the early 1990s. It had my name and social security number on it! When you give the waiter your credit card one also runs the risk that waiter can write down the numbers of the front of your card and the 3 digit code on the card also without your knowledge.

 

[Chuckanut]

By merely giving the billing company your check, you have given them all the information needed to debit your bank account electronically.

To be truly separate, you need to withdraw cash from the bank and take it to the billing company to pay the bill, and get a receipt for proof of payment.

Some people will setup a special bill payments checking account with an online bank. Ahead of bill paying day, they transfer the money needed to that account. Pay the bills with that account. Hopefully, the balance ends up being so low that even if some crook drains the account they get less than $100.

 

[ERObjd]

Have tried auto pay 2-3 times and was burned each time.
Tried it with mortgage back in 2007 with suntrust bank. payment was 700 and they took out 1400.. made the mistake of trusting suntrust again and they did it again.. then when I called them on it they acted like It was my fault.
I told them since it was 100% their fault and since they double dipped they best make it right..they did but took several weeks. We Switched mortgage companies right after that.. granted there was a switching fee of $125.00 but it was well worth it switched to usaa mortgage and we pay the mortgage with online bill pay from our account to mortgage. Moral "Do NOT Trust Sun Trust "

Also was burned by ymca gym as we had a auto pay for our daughter when she was in HS YMCA double dipped monthly fee then tried to claim it was NOT their fault. Really?? so that was the end of that cancelled that membership the same day., they threatened to send me to collections and I told them to pound sand. They owed me so how could I end up in collection? The refund took several weeks but they did refund and bank stopped auto pay the same day.

Similar with electric bill as well as we had a bill for 90 and they pulled out 270. got refunded but it took 2 months .. for that they get paper checks. Suffice to say we gave auto pay a chance and they proved not to be trusted. So it's paper checks for every bill and bank pay for mortgage. no one is trusted to dip their grubby fingers into our accounts. They get paper check or we use bank pay where we click the payment ourselves.

 

[disneysteve]

Suffice to say we gave auto pay a chance and they proved not to be trusted. So it's paper checks for every bill and bank pay for mortgage. no one is trusted to dip their grubby fingers into our accounts.

I understand why you don't do auto-pay but why paper checks? Why not pay electronically from your account like you do for the mortgage? Much safer and more reliable.

 

[ncbill]

My kid’s college tuition, my property tax payment and my state income tax estimates are three situations where cc payments are allowed, but the added cc fee is greater than my cc reward so I allow them to reach into my account and withdraw their payment. For each of these, I am initiating the transaction, they do not have blanket authorization to auto pay all bills.

I use my online billing for the above to "push" payment from my checking account rather than allow them to "pull" payment.

For any that can't accept electronic payments my online bill pay will print & mail a paper check for free.

 

[disneysteve]

My kid’s college tuition, my property tax payment and my state income tax estimates are three situations where cc payments are allowed, but the added cc fee is greater than my cc reward

Our daughter's college accepted credit card payment with no fee for the first 2-1/2 years she was there. Then they switched to charging a fee, but it was great while it lasted. We racked up a ton of extra reward points that way. After that, I just paid electronically from our checking account.

 

[beernutzbob]

If it can be automatically paid I will do it. I get $10 off a month on Comcast internet and $30 off a month on our Verizon bill by putting them on autopay.

 

[disneysteve]

If it can be automatically paid I will do it. I get $10 off a month on Comcast internet and $30 off a month on our Verizon bill by putting them on autopay.

How did you get those discounts? I have Comcast internet and Verizon home phone on auto-pay but don't receive any discount for doing so.

 

[beernutzbob]

How did you get those discounts? I have Comcast internet and Verizon home phone on auto-pay but don't receive any discount for doing so.

When I cut the cord at a Comcast office the rep told me I could get the $10 discount for auto paying just for the Internet service we were keeping. I'd been a Comcast customer for 20 years and had never been told this before.

My wife handles the Verizon account and she called them recently when we wanted to pay with a credit card instead of an automatic payment from our bank account. They told her we were receiving a $30 discount for bank auto pay and would lose it if we switched to paying with a credit card.

 

[Dtail]

We use a dedicated credit card to autopay our bills. Thus less chance of compromise, whereby we would have to reset each payment. Easy peasy.
I only write a check if absolutely necessary.

 

[Dtail]

Not all bills accept credit cards or if they do they charge a fee. The rewards aren’t worth it if you have to pay a 3% fee to use the card. We use a credit card for everything we can. Anything else goes through the checking account.

We will use the credit card even if a fee is charged, as long as the points received is a higher %. Our property tax bill is an example.