on line bill paying

Tom-D

Tom-D

Taxi to Parking
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
34,740
Display Name
Display name:
Tom-D
who does? is it safe ?
 
I use it, Tom, and I am very satisfied.

Mine, I do through Chase (because they got the assets and deposits of Washington Mutual after that bank was murdered by a press-induced bank run, but I digress).

You set up each vendor / payee on line, and it is trivially simple to do, then each such payee is there for an time you need to send money.

Many of the bills I pay are paid through electronic transfers, in which case they are usually paid within a day or two; others are paid by a check mailed out to the payee, and that can take a few days.

You can log in and see proof of payment - copy of endorsed check for check payments, some sort of confirming number thingies for the others.

It also interfaces with Quicken if like. I have not used this.

You can also set up automatic payments (mortgage, etc.) if you like.

I would NEVER do online bill pay on a vendor by vendor basis (as in, setting up for the vendor to draft your bank account) - this makes it much more difficult to control when and how money gets paid, and also complicates matters a lot.

Between paying many bills with the MasterCard (USAA Points, baby), and on-line bill pay, I hand-write fewer than five checks most months.

Most banks do not charge for the service (Chase does not).

As a vet (thanks, by the way), are you a USAA member? USAA has the hands-down best banking products, including online bill pay and the ability to deposit checks by scanning and emailing them in.
 
You're on the road a bit now right?

I've been doing online bill pay constantly since I started fulltiming 5 years ago. It's the only way to do it when you don't have a fixed address. I've never had a problem. Actually mail in payments are more of a hassle since the mail service screws up sometimes or raises their postage rates that result in returned/lost mail or late payments.
I mail order online from time to time and do the credit card routine with them too, again, never a problem. Just know your vendor.

There are a lot of automatic payment things you can set up however I go in each month and take 10 minutes to manually tell it to pay everything. I could easily set it up to pay automatically and not touch it again however I like the total control of whether money moves and when it moves.
 
I have also had more problems with the conventional mail than I have with automatic payments. I can't say that I've had any problems with automatic payments and I set up accounts that way when at all possible.
 
Add me to the list of satisfied customers with online bill paying.
 
I use online bill paying, but as already mentioned, I use the bank's ability to 'push' payments rather than having the vendor 'pull' from my accounts directly.
 
CJones said:
I use the bank's ability to 'push' payments rather than having the vendor 'pull' from my accounts directly.
Click to expand...
I have not had any problems with 'pull' payments from vendors either and many (most) of my accounts are set up like that.
 
Everskyward said:
I have not had any problems with 'pull' payments from vendors either and many (most) of my accounts are set up like that.
Click to expand...

I hold this method in disfavor, for two reasons:

1. If you need to change banks, all changes made at one source (well, two, the bank you're leaving and the new bank); and

2. A single obstreperous vendor can make life hell.
 
SCCutler said:
I hold this method in disfavor, for two reasons:

1. If you need to change banks, all changes made at one source (well, two, the bank you're leaving and the new bank); and

2. A single obstreperous vendor can make life hell.
Click to expand...
I like the convenience of not having to actually go to the bank site to initiate the payment. I know that some people want that control but for me it's easier to have everything done automatically. The only thing I need to do is remember to keep enough of a balance in my checking account.
 
SCCutler said:
I hold this method in disfavor, for two reasons:

1. If you need to change banks, all changes made at one source (well, two, the bank you're leaving and the new bank); and

2. A single obstreperous vendor can make life hell.
Click to expand...

The banks here SUCK at pushing the payments, they'll remove the money and it won't show up as paid for 2 weeks or worse. Some large payments (a la mortgage) I get real nervous after 10 days or so have passed and hundreds/thousands are missing from the bank account and not applied anywhere.
 
Makes life easier in my eyes. I have USAA
 
bartmc said:
The banks here SUCK at pushing the payments, they'll remove the money and it won't show up as paid for 2 weeks or worse. Some large payments (a la mortgage) I get real nervous after 10 days or so have passed and hundreds/thousands are missing from the bank account and not applied anywhere.
Click to expand...

I've used BoA online bill pay for years and never thought to correlate the date I said to pay the bill and the date the utility showed receiving payment. They normally default to at least 3 days from when I enter the data to the earliest it could transfer the funds. But I normally set up my bills to be paid about a week before due date and have had no problems.

The online bill pay saved me a late payment charge. I lost the bill on my desk, found it, crap due date in 4 days. Mailing the check would take at least a week for mail and then processing on their end. Online bill pay made the cut off date.

When I started BoA was free, still is. WF wanted a $9.95 per month fee, NOT!
USAA I've used for one time payments. USAA also has online deposits, while online with the bank, use my scanner with their program to deposit checks. I do not scan and email, it's all realtime online.
 
I use it. If the mailed payment doesn't arrive when promised then the bank will contact the vendor on my behalf and get them to waive any late fees (probably because the bank is on the hook for the fees if the waiver isn't granted).
 
bartmc said:
The banks here SUCK at pushing the payments, they'll remove the money and it won't show up as paid for 2 weeks or worse. Some large payments (a la mortgage) I get real nervous after 10 days or so have passed and hundreds/thousands are missing from the bank account and not applied anywhere.
Click to expand...

You have to use a bank that has a service that does real electronic payments. There are services that they can private label that just mail checks in your name. My bank just changed from Check Free to their own system (AFAIK.) If anything over the years they've gone through the effort to call up and get the payee's bank information to make more payments be e-payments like even my hangar rent bill.

With Check Free for the outliers you could see when they send a check 3-5 days ahead and you have to be careful to watch that it clears before you go wild at the casino.

To answer the OP, I've used bank e-pay for almost 20 years now and couldn't live without it. I log in to tweak payments every few weeks. I much prefer controlling when and what goes out to letting the biller debit my account when they feel like it. I only have that setup for my village water/sewer/trash bill that doesn't amount to much. I would fear something like a scammer putting a $1,000 charge on my phone bill which you couldn't dispute as effectively after they got your money.
 
mikea said:
I would fear something like a scammer putting a $1,000 charge on my phone bill which you couldn't dispute as effectively after they got your money.
Click to expand...
I don't know that I would fear anything like that. I just disputed a $7 phone call with AT&T Wireless and they agreed immediately to credit me. It showed up in a new bill only a few days later. I have never had any problem with vendors taking out inappropriate amounts of money or taking it out at the wrong time and I have these kinds of withdrawals set up for years.
 
SCCutler said:
I hold this method in disfavor, for two reasons:

1. If you need to change banks, all changes made at one source (well, two, the bank you're leaving and the new bank); and

2. A single obstreperous vendor can make life hell.
Click to expand...
I agree with these statements. In addition, I got burned when Prudential was churning life insurance- I had to close out the checking account to make it stopped. This was the first and only electronic bill pay I had- Never again!
 
SCCutler said:
I use it, Tom, and I am very satisfied.

Mine, I do through Chase
Click to expand...

I have had two very negative experiences with Chase online Bill Pay.

The first was way back in 1988, when online billpay was in its infancy. Chase insisted on making payments to the wrong vendor. The Village Water Company in my town wouldn't accept on line payments so they sent them to some water company with "Village" in its name in another state. Not cool.

More recently, I once again used Chase's on line bill pay system. I sent in my daughter's college tuition. Northwestern University in Evanston Il. They sent it to some outfit in Suburban Detroit - yes! on Northwestern Highway.

I sent a blistering letter to Chase and got back a form letter saying "Steps would be taken" to correct the problem, and that Chase would be liable for the damages. I blew up. This was the exact language I received back in 1988. I sent a return letter that since this was my daughter's tuition, and that she could not register for classes until tuition paid, and that if courses she needed to take were then full, the damages could well be the need for an extra semester... and I asked them to confirm that they would pay the extra $50k tuition. Also I asked them to inform me of What Steps would be taken, and please provide a name and contact information of the individual responsible for taking these alleged steps.

No reply.

So I sent everything to the Chairman of the Board of Directors. And I took every dime I had out of Chase. Never Again. By that I mean Never Again Chase.

Having said all that, I have used other Bill Paying services and find them convenient and reliable. Two that I particularly like are from USAA Savings and People's Bank (Now Peoples United) Bridgeport CT.

Tom, don't be afraid to try these systems but watch them like a hawk for the first several months.

-Skip
 
What I don't do are auto payments. I do all payments manually - through the appropriate websites. Yes, it adds a few more steps, but it helps me to keep track of everything and ensure that I'm getting charged appropriately.

In some cases, I go to the payee's website (say, AmEx) and let them pull the amount I tell them from my bank account. In some cases, I use my bank's website and send it out.

I've never had an issue with the wrong amount being drawn. I've also never had issues with a fraudulent charge being handed down to me. Every legitimate dispute I've made, I've one. I've even won some disputes where they didn't have to let me win because they were in the right, but did it in the name of keeping the customer happy.
 
BillTIZ said:
I've used BoA online bill pay for years and never thought to correlate the date I said to pay the bill and the date the utility showed receiving payment. They normally default to at least 3 days from when I enter the data to the earliest it could transfer the funds. But I normally set up my bills to be paid about a week before due date and have had no problems.

The online bill pay saved me a late payment charge. I lost the bill on my desk, found it, crap due date in 4 days. Mailing the check would take at least a week for mail and then processing on their end. Online bill pay made the cut off date.

When I started BoA was free, still is. WF wanted a $9.95 per month fee, NOT!
USAA I've used for one time payments. USAA also has online deposits, while online with the bank, use my scanner with their program to deposit checks. I do not scan and email, it's all realtime online.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't really care so much if it were just a time issue, they TAKE the money then it doesn't get applied for about 2 weeks on the mortgage and can be longer than that It's just money floating around somewhere. I don't like seeing an entire mortgage payment GONE from my account and a mortgage account that doesn't have the payment applied for days on end. It's like a couple of grand are out there in limbo and I can't really say "where" it is. If I mail a check, They cash it when they get it and I know that money gone = payment made and applied.
 
Everskyward said:
I like the convenience of not having to actually go to the bank site to initiate the payment. I know that some people want that control but for me it's easier to have everything done automatically. The only thing I need to do is remember to keep enough of a balance in my checking account.
Click to expand...

"Pull" payments don't have to be automatic. I have mine set up so that I authorize each one.
 
I have been using on online billpay for a number of years now, through two banks, with zero issues. I avoid having anyone "pull" from the account, though there are a couple of exceptions. Some I set up with regular, scheduled monthly payments (mortgage, car) and others I do manually. One nice thing is being able to set up the payment for each bill as it comes in, and pick the date it will be paid. I use Wells Fargo now, and their system will tell you when it will be delivered when you pick the date to pay. Nice feature, though I always allow a couple of extra days anyway.

I get VERY few paper bills/statements any more, and those I do get only hang around the house un-shredded for a day or three. I set up the payment and drop them in the "memory hole".
 
Palmpilot said:
"Pull" payments don't have to be automatic. I have mine set up so that I authorize each one.
Click to expand...
Also, the vendors almost all send you an email telling you that you have a bill at least a couple weeks in advance so that you can look at it to see if it is logical. I just skip the extra step of authorizing each payment individually since I am going to make it anyway.
 
Online all the way. NO auto payments. I do have auto-deposit from work so the paycheck is in there like clock work. I also set up a separate online checking account for online purchases and EZ Pass with minimum balance, just in case.
 
Yup online here too. Used to use a service from Quicken ten years ago. Now just let the Credit Union handle it for free. Some vendors get run through a credit card with bennies that gets paid off every month. Free money. Only do that of the payee is eating the credit card charges.

Even use electronic transfers to the LLC for the airplane expenses to make our spreadsheet guy's life easier. No paper check to take to the bank. He just sees it in the online system for the LLCs bank account a couple days after the monthly spreadsheet update goes out.

Giving up Quicken this year altogether -- tired of sending Intuit money to have such awful Mac support. Might make tax time a little more painful but worth it to dump Intuit.
 
I am a paper guy; help.
So if I go with online payments for the bidniz (about 150checks per month right now) I believe I will still have to make these entries in my ledger so that my accountant can know where the money went, so that I get totals for the various types of expenditures.
Right now when I make an entry, I also print out a 15c check and yes, mail it in a 5c envelope and a 44c stamp for about a dollar each.
However its pretty quick.
So I will save 150/mo plus time licking stamps....but is it really better? I sort of dread spending more 'work-time' on the puter.
 
Depends on how fast you can learn a flow.

Kinda like newbie pilots with checklists doing each step line by line trying to get better each time, versus old salts who can do the flow and read it afterward as a check.

Once you have a "system" down it still may not save huge amounts of time but it'll save $96 in postage, envelopes, and checks per month, sounds like. $1152 for 100LL for the plane sounds worth the hassle of learning it to me. ;)

My Credit Union charges me $0 for items they have to print a check and mail. Gives them motivation to find out how to pay the vendor or individual electronically.

I don't know if that deal applies to a business account or not. Worth checking into that.
 
Spoonfeed me.
So I arrange with my bank to send payments to the vendors when I want, specifically:
After reviewing statements, I go online and tell them XY$ to Acme Widgets etc etc x150. Presumably there is some considerable time arranging to get Acme's e-address to the bank, so they know where to send payment.
Then, the bank remembers Acme next month, I select that vendor and enter an amount, ba-ding. Hopefully I get a transaction number to record on the statement so when the vendor does not receive payment I have something to reference. I will write the TN on the statement before filing. Then I go to my bidniz software and enter the payment.

There will still be a need to write checks, just less of them.

Something like that?
 
On of the plusses of online bill paying is that you can often download your information to a Quicken or other money usable program.

I also agree with the others who say the ability to pay my bills without physically checking my mail is a great help. It is possible for me to go three weeks without being able to get my mail. I get emails from my creditors that I have a new bill.

Good luck,
 
hijole! There's a gotcha - I was checking out my bank's system and they say they will send you an email reminder for each bill that is due and an enotice when a payment is processed, plus others. That is sounding like 500 emails a month! Only rsnble. poss. is most people filter em'. (?)
 
Barb and I have been with the same credit union for well over 30 years, recently we have been more and more interested in the on line banking and they have "bill Pay' As a service and have been considering using it.

So We were curious about the safety of the transfer thing.
 
Tom-D said:
So We were curious about the safety of the transfer thing.
Click to expand...

IMO it's safe enough. I didn't like the idea of every penny I had sitting there waiting for a wire transfer by a despicable whoever credit card company or such to clean me out. Sure I could get it fixed eventually however it could take a while and be no end of hassles. Call me paranoid or whatever you want but I'm a bit cautious after a horrifically nasty 401K fiasco with a company I worked for last century.

One thing I did was set up several bank accounts. One was specifically dedicated to online bill pay, the rare check that I write, and auto deposit from employers. It have about 2 months of typical payment funds in that account and not a penny more. If a credit card company or whoever is extracting money for payment decides to clean that account out, it would PO'd me to no end however it wouldn't wreck me either. When that account needs more funds, I simply take an extra minute to transfer the funds as needed on my bank's website only. To this day, anyone who decides to try to clean me out will think I have only a few hundred dollars to my name and only a checking account.
 
I love online bill pay. I am with BOA and it kicks butt. I even use their online bills feature, so a lot of my bills show up there instead of being mailed to my house. I can then schedule the payment right there, and it reminds me a few days before if I have not yet scheduled the payment. I have had very little trouble with this, and the one time a payment went MIA, BOA covered it and didn't charge me for the late fee's that were assessed.

As for auto drafts, I have three. My mortgage, life insurance, and one credit card (lower interest rate because of this) and I have never had a problem with this...as long as I have the funds available.
 
recently we have been more and more interested in the on line banking and they have "bill Pay'
Click to expand...

I would start into it with one bill. Pay that only, each month for a few months. See how it works out. If no problems, start adding other payees. Honestly, it sounds as unsafe as any other thing we do with our money.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Honestly, it sounds as unsafe as any other thing we do with our money.
Click to expand...

That's how I look at it. I use credit cards as much as possible because of the protection they provide. Yes, people have tried to screw me, no, they haven't won (yet).

Thing is, let's say that you put all your money into your mattress. Then your house burns down. For the moment, I think banks are still a bit more secure. But maybe I should put my money in a solid investment: airplane. :)
 
Doing it; safe. I still get "bills/statements" by mail. Accordingly, I schedule an online payment for each applicable, perhaps 20 or 25 days(or more) in advance of "Due."
I soon get an e-mail acknowledgment of "Scheduled Payment. After said "Scheduled Payment" is applied I get an e-mail from the account "Confirming your payment on. . ."

If the billing account screws up and doesn't process the payment "on time" I have the prior e-mailed acknowledgment that they had it on record as "set-up" to be done.

HR
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Spoonfeed me.
So I arrange with my bank to send payments to the vendors when I want, specifically:
After reviewing statements, I go online and tell them XY$ to Acme Widgets etc etc x150. Presumably there is some considerable time arranging to get Acme's e-address to the bank, so they know where to send payment.
Then, the bank remembers Acme next month, I select that vendor and enter an amount, ba-ding. Hopefully I get a transaction number to record on the statement so when the vendor does not receive payment I have something to reference. I will write the TN on the statement before filing. Then I go to my bidniz software and enter the payment.

There will still be a need to write checks, just less of them.

Something like that?
Click to expand...

Mo' betta than that. Set up for e-bills, which usually means giving the bank your credentials for online access to your biller, and the bank will know what you owe. You choose to view your bill at the bank's site, and automatically pay the entire balance or the minimum payment on the date due. You could be in a coma and not miss a payment.

I have written a total of maybe 12-15 checks a year. I only write checks to hired help and for things like license plates.
 
Last edited:
Let'sgoflying! said:
Spoonfeed me.
So I arrange with my bank to send payments to the vendors when I want, specifically:
After reviewing statements, I go online and tell them XY$ to Acme Widgets etc etc x150. Presumably there is some considerable time arranging to get Acme's e-address to the bank, so they know where to send payment.
Click to expand...

This is correct so far, except for the "considerable time" part. All you have to enter into the website usually is Payee Name (individual or business), address, and a phone number in case they pay someone and they later say they never got it. In my CU's system you also get a field that you can type anything into to "tag" the payment on your statement which could be used for anything... A little code you made up for Payees, a line number on your ledger, it's free form.

They handle hunting down the electronic stuff starting right at first entry. They do a search and say, "Is this the right company/payee?" and if they have it in their database, the payment goes out electronically, bank to bank.

If not, they send a check and presumably there's some munchkins in a back room who do a manual search. The difference is in how few days in advance you can pay that payee. All start out as 7 business days and switch to 2 or 3 in the system after they're electronic. Payees like Utilities and other big company stuff usually start out right at the beginning as "We found this payee in our system" at the initial Payee search and they're 2-3 days from the very beginning.

Here's the neat part -- as someone mentioned, there's another service the back-end processors do... They can ask larger companies to send your bill electronically to them. You log into the system it will say, "You have a new bill from X, would you like to see it/pay it now?"

Let'sgoflying! said:
Then, the bank remembers Acme next month, I select that vendor and enter an amount, ba-ding. Hopefully I get a transaction number to record on the statement so when the vendor does not receive payment I have something to reference. I will write the TN on the statement before filing. Then I go to my bidniz software and enter the payment.
Click to expand...

Yup, you got it. The transaction number is actually either a number for the electronic transaction or an odd-ball high numbered check number, depending on how they ended up paying the payee.

Let'sgoflying! said:
There will still be a need to write checks, just less of them.

Something like that?
Click to expand...

Actually depending on the bank, they may write those and mail them for you for free or charge you a small fee (less than your $96 in postage) to send a lot of them. At my CU, I've never paid a fee.

Other nifty features are scheduling payments or reminders via e-mail or even automatically paying the amount on the ones where the bank receives your bill if you choose to allow that much integration. I have a few bills sent to them but I set it not to pay those bills until I log in, review them, and click the payment button myself. Little too automatic for me to just let it auto-pay. But I could see that feature being quite handy if someone traveled a lot and just wanted to make sure the bills got paid while they were away.

Every bank and CU is slightly different on the user interface in your web browser but my understanding is that there's really only two or three companies that actually enable all of this "magic". They sell the service to the banks and CUs. I believe the very largest banks may be doing their own code/servers for some of this (B of A has an incredibly detailed and relatively organized website, as much as I otherwise hate them -- one of my loans was purchased by them), but smaller institutions are using the big clearing houses. My CU is medium sized and couldn't build such as system if they wanted to. When you go through their website you're redirected to the "Bill Pay" website which is run by another company.

Hope that helps. Sadly all of this is ultimately possible because of the move to have banks send digital images of checks ten years ago. No freight dogs flying the checks around at night hardly anymore like many pilots used to do to earn hours. The banks don't even have to print a real check, they just send an image of one to the other bank. Fake money at its finest. ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top