Slashdot Mirror
On Paying Bills Online
sharv asks: "I'd like to hear what you all think of the relatively new online bill payment services offered by sites like OnMoney and Yahoo Bill Pay - they both seem to be powered by the same engine, from an outfit called PayTrust. I'm curious if anyone's using one of these services and what, if any, technical issues people are concerned about. Any privacy concerns? How about any problems arising from not having snail-mail copies of your statements immediately available? Any of the meatspace bureaucracies having problems dealing with this latest incarnation of paperless personal finance?"
I've been using Wells Fargo for about eight months and it's generally o.k. and certainly more convenient than writing checks by hand. But I only use it for selected bills. Last December I decided to try and pay my Farmers Auto Insurance with it. I set it up and paid the bill about six business days before it was due, but Wells Fargo and/or Farmers screwed up and it didn't get paid for about three weeks. Meanwhile I was getting dunning letters and threats to cut off my insurance from Farmers. When I wrote to Wells Fargo about it, all they did was send me some gobbledygook from Check Free - basically washed their hands of the whole thing. So be careful and don't believe Wells Fargo when they say on their site to allow "five business days" for payment. Fifteen or twenty would be more like it.
Hey, Mr. Logician, maybe we didn't hear about a second incident because the Navy was smart enough to rip out their NT servers and replace them with something that works - to wit, any Unix system you could name - Linux, BSD, Solaris, AIX, etc.
... i hear they made that choice because of security reasons. just wanted to spread the info.
If they did anything like the U.S. Army they replaced them with G3's
I've used Citibanks system for two years now. Like you said, I also receive bills. But it's so easy, they keep all the information, you get an "express" payment screen that shows you your last payment, and date, and amount for next payment in a nice table. Three minutes or so each month is all it takes me to pay bills. I ran out of checks over a year ago, and never got more. That was the last I ever wrote a check. If you are still paying by hand, you're missing. Out. And you don't need any newfangled dot com site to do it, if you have a reasonably large bank. Most offer 90% of this functionality.
And some doofus parked 500,000 cards on the US Navy Credit Union server in Mar99, that was just reported last week. The excuse for waiting so long to flag it? "Well, it wasn't our customers that were getting screwed."
My employer has some receivables paid by the Intuit service. Generally takes us 6 weeks to see it from the time the customer authorizes the transaction.
I am sitting here reading all this wonder and amazement at this "new service" of being able to pay your bills online. the only problem is, if you bank with a medium to large bank, you have probably already had this service for months. I work for a large bank in the southeast, and we have had bill pay for quite a while now. and the number one reason it is better...there is no third party handling your money. it goes from the bank to the merchant. nice to know that slashdot readers are so hip with the technology scene.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Actually, the post before mine did. He claimed to directly contrast NT and Linux, in Linux's favor of course, would you expect anything else from a Linux zealot?
And NT has proven itself so well. *choke*
Well let's see here, as far as we know, the Navy is willing to try NT for one of it's Battle Ships. I haven't heard about them trying Linux, to run a battleship, have you? I didn't think so. NT: 1, Linux: 0.
But I can see you're not one to be reasoned with anyway, as you must resort to bashing someone's typos. It is...too late for you, my poor lackey.
How about grammar?
My laptop on the other hand, (which work mandates must be running NT) runs like a piece of shit if I have more than a browser and email program open. And it's more pimped out ...
You shouldn't start a sentence with "and." HTH. HAND.
-lb
Unfortunately, their online bill pay service doesn't even work, and is the only thing they've been royally screwing up. I submitted an application form three times, and when I finally got signed up, the bill pay web page didn't even work. Clicking on the links just made it load the home page.
I mentioned it to my account manager and he shook his head and rolled his eyes. He mentioned that it's been having so many problems that the company buzz is that they will punt everything and go with a Quicken based solution, in which you use Quicken as your interface to their services.
I haven't heard for sure what will happen, but I hope they don't go with quicken because part of the reason I'm interested in online bill paying is so that I can access my bills anywhere, and not need to carry a laptop with my account information on it.
Just a data point for the topic.
-Derrick
That's because innovation is different than invention. The minimum requirement to be innovative is to take another idea, twist it slightly and make it better than before.
But to assume innovation means invention, what parts of linux would you classify as innovation? The kernel is just regurgitated standard kernel design techniques.
There's nothing that was developed solely and originally for unix that classifies as an invention. Just like everything else, it's just a minor change on something here and there.
I could however make the argument easily about Microsoft innovation, can you do the same for Linux? What has Linux really innovated?
It hasn't.
As for that dollar, how about we call it a draw and you send that dollar to GNU? They're going to need it to have a chance of competing against Microsoft.
-lb
What bothers me about Paytrust and other similar services is that you seem to become dependent on them. I would prefer to have my bills electronically sent to them, with a regular paper copy sent to me. That way, if I decide to dump them, I'm right back where I started, without a lot of hassle redirecting the bills back to myself. Can this be done easily?
Russ P.
Same type of thing in Holland, another advanced country. You can have bills automagically paid from your bank account if you choose. You can also just transfer money from your acct to the other person's account manually. much better than checks..
And it was so well received that they decided to sell it to CheckFree:
ATLANTA and REDMOND, Wa. (February 15, 2000) - CheckFree (Nasdaq: CKFR), the market leader in electronic billing and payment, and TransPoint, the electronic billing and payment joint venture between First Data Corp. (NYSE: FDC) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), announced today they have entered into a definitive merger agreement. All outstanding ownership interests in TransPoint, which are held by Microsoft, First Data and Citibank, will be transferred to CheckFree...Here's the link
Not only do you go with a more reliable company like Microsoft, which will be able to make deals with far more companies for online bill paying because of it's size, but you get to benefit from microsoft's experience and the superior security of it's operating system.
From SecurityPortal.com:
Red Hat did a better job of handling the "full disclosure" bug releases, usually solving these problems in under 2 weeks, with 67 days being the extreme case. Microsoft usually took over 3 weeks to patch "full disclosure" bug releases, with a worst case of 146 days.
Here's the link
--
Where do you want to go, toady?
I don't know... The first thing I thought of when reading the heading for this article was about a specific company's Chief Bloatware Architect... And no, I don't want to pay him. Not online, not offline. Just my 2c...
Of course your Linux machine never needs fixing, you can never use it for anything worthwhile anyway. You know you do all your web browsing through IE because it blows netscape and mozilla away, whether it's reliability, security or just plain ease of use.
You said:
First, my Linux box does not run IE, so I don't use IE at home. Does anyone have IE running under Linux? Last time I checked MS only released IE for their own platforms. I guess you could use Wine or something of the sort, but who wants to do that for a browser?
Did you bother to read the thread before your free-software cult instincts kicked in and you decided to throw yourself into the conversation? This post was directly in response to another post where he talked about how *his* nt machine at work is much faster than *his* linux machine at work.
I was pointing out to *him* how he does most of *his* work on nt. You were never referred to in this conversation.
Next time someone pushes one of your zealotry button, try to read the context of the thread before you hop in.
At least the other cultists here have some idea what the conversation is about.
You said:
Second, the NT box that I use at work runs Netscape. Sure, I have a version of IE on it, that crashes on just about every other website, including MS's. And it's not as simple as downloading a the latest version either. I tried that. I downloaded the latest install package (using Netscape no less), and tried to install it. It gets about 90% done and then crashes my machine. Reboot. Run install again. Same result. Reboot. Download again. Run install. Crash.
I tried to get IE up and running, but I'm not going to go so far as to burn down my NT box and reinstall just to have it. I'm sure that's the solution that tech support at MS would suggest. So, I'm stuck using Netscape. Yeah, it's slower than IE, but it works!
And what does this have to do with the conversation? Boiling down what you're saying here leaves us with "netscape crashes all the time" or "I have no clue how to use windows."
Frankly, both scenarios seem just as likely. But either way, at work I have to use both IE and Netscape as well as NT and I haven't rebooted my machine for weeks.
Also, I'd like to interject that what we were arguing here was not NT as a workstation but NT as a server, and it's obvious you have no experience with that.
Again, let me stress, the next time you feel like jumping into a conversation stop and ask yourself "Do I have any clue what I'm talking about?" followed shortly by "Do I have any clue what they're talking about?"
Thanks for playing.
-lb
Same here.
ditto.. Quicken home banking rocks.
I don't know about Bill-Pay, but this has been taken care of in Norway (another advanced country, I guess). Every bill I get has the option of including a "bill id". When I want to pay that bill, I tell my bank what my bank account number is, to which bank account the money should go, and the bill id number. The creditors get a tape/floppy from the bank once in a while with these data.
If I want to pay several bills, I have to switch off the "bill id" feature (a checkbox on the web page) and write a textual message including my customer id or something else. This allows the creditor to match my payment to whatever he uses at his place. This usually has to be done manually, while the "bill id" thing usually is plugged into some automated software bit, at least for largish organizations.
If anything is screwed up, I can get hold of the accounting details of the payment in the bank fairly easy and push that in the creditors face. A lazy creditor can't just send my case over to some collection agency, as some norwegian law or other says that bills where creditor and debitor does not agree to the claim must be handled by the creditor alone.
I am left with assuring that I remember to register my payments. I have to trust the bank not to lose them (They have done this only once, when the service was brand new. I noticed a significant extra amount in my account that shouldn't be there the next time I was to register a payment, and called the creditor to tell him what happened. He didn't make a fuss at all, and got his money five days late).
I think this works quite well. I have gone to some pains to choose a bank that uses a one-time password generator, and web pages sent via SSL. Other financial institutions in Norway are not as clueful. I would never use a bank that didn't take the security of my money seriously. Specifically, I would never use Bill-Pay, from what I have read on /.
The corroborating statements from a commissioned officer that I read in the article showed a strong regret and anxiety about the situation, and a inability to expand on the topic in public beyond confirming that yes the Yorktown was dead in the water because NT nodes went down and could not be restarted in a way that brought the ship's vital systems under control. And yes, it had to be towed in and that further, there were pervasive problems which made him wish the spec for the project had been developed in a strict meritocratic fashion.
He characterized the civilian employee's statements as accurate as to facts, but said the employee had developed an activist stance which he would not or could not fully adopt himself, presumably for the obvious reason of being a subordinate officer with orders to make something work.
NO MOTHERFUCKER, YOU HAVE TO ALLOW IT UNLESS YOU CAN PROVE I'LL HARM YOU BY COLLECTING INFORMATION ON WHAT YOU DO. NO MOTHERFUCKER THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON YOU--RIGHT WHERE YOU PUT IT !
I'm only following your code of ethics and standard of civil behavior. Don't accuse ME of doing something wrong you fucking hypocrite, you're the one who wants to give away everyone's privacy without even a hinted offer of informed consent or compensation I might add.
I just have to that Internet banking is wonderful when you realize at 11:59 pm that you have 60 seconds left to pay your MasterCard bill...
Paytrust is awesome!. I no longer deal with snail mail. In fact I have no reason to even check my physical mailbox. I just let it stack up and let the post office deal with sending all of that physical spam back. Paytrust scans in my actual bills front and back, if I ever need the original I can request it. As of yet I have not needed an original. No more shredding! I love it! Before paytrust I would end up waiting for my power or water to be shut off, because the bill got piled under 100s of cerdit card offers and other spam. I never had the time to deal with bills. Late fees were $100s/month. Not to mention my credit report getting marked up. Along came Paytrust, what a life saver! I have not been hit with one single advertisement on Paytrust. The only thing I don't like is all of the frames and java script they use. I think the same job could have been done without it. Robert (Forgot my login to /. again)
I lived in the US for about 18 months and several things stunned me, I have never been in a UK bank that doesn't offer:
Free cheques (you don't pay for the paper, or to use them)
Direct Debit (you fill in a form between yourself and the company which allows them to automatically deduct the correct amount from your account to pay the bill, this doesn't cost anything, and the bank guarantees to correct any problems with incorrect billing)
Interest on as little as 1 pound in your current (read chequing) account.
No monthly charges at all so long as you remain in credit.
Debit cards that can be used pretty much anywhere that takes a credit card, again at no charge (these became the norm over 10 years ago).
Please remember that these are 'normal' services for 'normal' banks in the UK. I am aware that some banks in the US probably do this for certain customers.
Incidentally the government is now complaining that banks want to charge customers of other banks for drawing out cash through their machines. We have come to expect no charge for doing this too.
Of course you'll never hear of a destroyer being abandoned because of a Linux problem. No military on this planet would trust ships which cost hundreds of millions (if not billions) to an unproven operating system like Linux. If NT were really so bad don't you think we'd see things like this every day? But we don't.
Or how the one windows machine i use seems to need a reboot now and then or "funny things happen." While my linux box never needs fixing...
Of course your Linux machine never needs fixing, you can never use it for anything worthwhile anyway. You know you do all your web browsing through IE because it blows netscape and mozilla away, whether it's reliability, security or just plain ease of use.
You're running complicated, big applications on NT all day long to get your work done, and you're using Linux to play. Of course Linux isn't going to crash, you're not stressing the machine at all.
I probably shouldn't even spend my time correcting you anyway, you write like a 13-year old linux zealot irc warrior. And I'm supposed to believe you have a job in a professional environment? Please.
-lb
Yeah, but you forget - this is slashdot - only rabidly pro-Linux opinions are tolerated round these parts.
Anyone daring to hold their own, different, opinion obviously isn't fit to hold an opinion...
Taco's mom online. She takes all types of credit cards.
How can ya kite a check at the liquor store with online bill paying? Cow A. Bunga
I've been using SFNB (Security First Network Bank) as my one and only bank for almost two years now. They have all-online everything -- I can pay my bills there (and if they can't electronically transfer the money they cut a check and mail it at their expense). When I write a check, I don't get stubs back in the mail -- I can look at JPEG images of the cleared checks. I get up-to-the-second balance information and everything is FREE -- as in no monthly fee for anything.
Add onto this great customer support (call or email) and I've never been more satisfied with a bank.
Actually, the Yahoo folks guarantee that if you set your payment date 4 business days before the bill is due, and your payment still doesn't arrive on time, they will pay any late charges.
I've been using the Yahoo service since inception with no problems. I even pay my apartment rent through Yahoo.
Win32 is only "powerful" because it's huge enough to cover (almost) everything. A more orthogonal API would be more powerful and have far fewer random little structs and single-purpose functions to learn about.
Anyone knows that you can't put money on a line. A line is just a mathematical concept. If you were to put money on a line, you would have to have infinite money because any fool knows that a line extends indefinitely in both directions. Not even Bill Gates has that much money...right?
I prefer to pay my bills on a trapezoid. It is a closed quadrilateral structure, much like my bank account is about to be closed.
None of the banks I know of in the Midwest offer it for free unless you maintain a large balance that gets no interest.
...and bill you for doing so.
Then again, if you can get enough yuppies to buy what would otherwise be given away for free, I suppose that's good for profit.
The whole idea seems fairly ludicrous if you have to pay for it:
1. Have your bills sent to us.
2. Give us your banking information.
3. We'll pay the bills from your account
4.
5. If there's a screwup, good luck.
6. And until your account runs out of cash, you can keep paying your bills after you're dead!
Bonanza for the payees, bonanza for the services.
Is your life so full that you want to farm part of it out?
Gas and Electricity
Water
Telephone
All insurance
Cable TV & Roadrunner
I can also browse my bank account with 128 bit SSL Netscape so I can always determine my balance and account history.
I got to take a tour of a bill payer's data center once. Pretty standard data center: dual power sources (above and below ground), but the best part was the check printing area. They print many thousands of checks a day. It was almost as exciting as the Mint with all that money flowing by. Of course, from a privacy standpoint, I could read the checks as they were printing off! - my first /. post
Bank one and Visa have gotten together to offer the ability to 'email' money using your bank account or credit card. Wonder how the IRS feels about those transactions.
Online payment systems would definitely make it easier to pay off my grits. The more to put down my pants!!!
IIRC M$ sold it's interest in Transpoint to CheckFree.
--
Where do you want to go, toady?
(sig so good I had to steal it)
True, I never asked her if she cared if i watched, and i never told her I was doing it either, and i certainly haven't told her how to turn off my douche-cam--and never will!
But guys like you tell me it's Ok to watch people and amass personal information on them without informing that I'm watching them--wow, I sure have learned so much about doucheing preferences by watching your mom, along with others. How I use the info is my business, motherfucker: this, also, you have told me!
Do you think she'd run out of the bathroom if i somehow let her know i was watching her right now?
They didn't try to hide who they were, and they had a legitimate return address, but it was still spam.
>One positive feature about the Wells Fargo
>bill-pay however -- if you use it to send an
>ordinary check to somebody, they get a check
>drawn not on your account but on Wells Fargo
>Bank. That's almost as good as a certified
> check, and it's free.
They do this so that they can earn interest on the float, which may not be appealing all the time... some people have setups such that they could keep that interest for themselves.
Paying bills with WWW has been normal thing in Finland over three years now. I think that it was in 1996 when I first time used WWW to pay bills. Almost every Bank in Finland has this kind of service for about $2 monthly fee. Works pretty well.
I've been really happy with these guys. I have a tendancy to let my bills collect in a pile on my desk, where they eventually get buried under junk mail, printouts, and books. I've moved all of my accounts over to them, and pay everything on-time and with no hassle. They send an email any time a new bill arrives, and I can log on, view a .PDF of my bill, and pay it from any Web browser, anywhere.
I don't have to worry about bills that come in while I am out of town, because almost anywhere I go I have Web access. It also makes it pretty much impossible to misplace (lose) or forget about a bill. They will even email me if one or more bills is within five days of its deadline and hasn't been paid yet.
The only thing I would really like to see is a direct online banking interface to them for Quicken. You can download a file to import into Quicken, but there isn't an easy, foolproof way of dealing with it. This doesn't make it very compatible with online banking services.
Of course, all the Linux weenies on slash dot will never get this because no banks are ever going to establish service like this for some amorphus open source product like GNU Cash (shit, doesn't Stollman have any originality -- MS Money, GNU Cash, anyone see a little similarity there?!). MS has the moxie to pull this off. Maybe Intuit could too, but I don't think they have. That's why MS is taking the market aaway from them!
>>As I understand it direct payment is not nearly as popular in the US than in Canada.
FYI about this, I read an article on the web (don't remember where, sorry) a few weeks ago about electronic money, ie. using some sort of smart debit cards instead of cash. The basic story is that the US banking & credit industries are waaay behind their European counterparts in this, and don't much care about catching up. Their attitude was that there isn't any market for it so there's no reason to try to sell it, and of course the other side of it is that since no one's selling it there's no market. It sounds like the fact that the US is behind Canada and Europe with electronic direct payment is the same sort of thing.
I've been using PayTrust for several months, and I've had no problems. I'm paying both my mortgage and my car payment through them, and obviously not using my payment coupons, without problems. I am not, however, having my bills sent to them, so I can keep track of them. I've got just about everything else set up to pay using a rule to pay monthly, and all of those payments are working great.
Why would you want to use a third party like that - when almost every bank in the world now has on-line bill pay. Wells Fargo / Norwest covers most the world and they do. Both my credit unions have it. So I assume most banks do. And they have a REAL obligation to YOU and YOUR PRIVACY and SECURITY, and they ALREADY have all your information and purchasing habits....
Funny thing about Finland is that you can't pay your daily groceries with checks anymore here. Personally I find direct money transfers from online banks much more reliable than using my credit card online. God only knows what kind of MS servers each netstore is using, I'd rather use the banks IT to handle my money and personal data. ;-) -- users.utu.fi/juhehe
I hate money as we used to know it!
This has got to be the funniest examples of circular reasoning I've seen in a long time!
Hey, Mr. Logician, maybe we didn't hear about a second incident because the Navy was smart enough to rip out their NT servers and replace them with something that works - to wit, any Unix system you could name - Linux, BSD, Solaris, AIX, etc.
Who is liable if the office where your paper copies of your bills is burnt down?
Elijah Chancey www.elijahsadventure.com nomadic IT consultant, bicycling across america "all that you touch / and all
When you send a fucking bill in the mail it ain't encrypted. OHMYGOD! Anyone can get you if they want.
Dude.....you are an ignorant and highly unintelligent sheep....go with the other sheeps and have a nice day!!!!!!!!
-Never believe in the end of something great, send it to sub-committee for further study!!! - ME
Why are you spreading FUD, and why does someone think it's "insightful ..."?
.. now that I previewed this I see someone removed the "insightful" at least.)
.. gasp .. oooh .. ahhh.
l 97131.html
.. but I guess that's my :(
(OK
If you aren't worried about your credit card# because it's protected, consider the FDIC insurance of your
assets (anyone who doesn't verify the bank they are dealing with is FDIC insured deserves what they
get, IMNSHO)
I personally wasn't sure if FDIC *would* insure funds in an eBanking scenario so I
actually did some *research* before posting.
A good place to start is:
Security Risks Associated with the Internet
http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/1997/fi
It really peeves me when people get scores above 1 when they deserve 0 or -1
hangup and I'll have to deal with it
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
nerds, Nerds, NERDS!!! All of these feeble-ass 'billPay' systems are based on the same feeble-ass stuff. Take three seconds to ask yourself one simple question: "What is a US dollar?" It is NOTHING. Backed by a promise to repay... a dollar. They might be loud-mouthed assholes with bad haircuts, but the dimwads at e-gold have been offering third-party bill payment services for ages. Every stinkin' Bob's Bank is offering online this and that. Dub... helllllOOOOOOOO!!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!
I used to be disgusted. Now, I try to be amused.
Not only do you go with a more reliable company like Microsoft, which will be able to make deals with far more companies for online bill paying because of it's size, but you get to benefit from microsoft's experience and the superior security of it's operating system.
I love the double standards here, people ignore innovation by companies like Microsoft, but as soon as someone uses linux to wipe his ass for him, it's an amazing technological advancement.
I hate the hypocrisy here.
-lb
Citibank encourages customers to use their online banking. It's free. Also, you can pay any bill electronically. If they don't have a relationship with the company whose bill you're paying they'll just send 'em a check. Out of curiousity once I did the online bill paying to my roommate. Sure enough, a couple days later a check arrived from Citibank for him with the notes I had added to it. Pretty spiffy.
Newsflash: every time you send someone a check, they get a vacuum hose into your checking account, same as all these other things. Ever noticed the account number printed at the bottom? That's enough for them to make an electronic debit.
You know, where you write in an asterisk by the numeric dollar amount, and put the asterisk at the bottom that says "Cashing of this checks constitures payment in full of balance on account #123456". Companies screw up, and if proof of payment is "not in the computer" they don't want to hear your excuses, they just turn the "bill" over to collection agencies, one after the other, forever. Where's the option for write in conditions on Bill-Pay transactions and the legal support to back it up? Judges have accepted my canceled checks with conditions as proof enough of the debt being settled when creditors fuck up (and bank has copy of cancelled checks on microfilm). Will they accept some printout from Netscape as "proof" of payment, or an email from Bill-Pay? I think not.
However, I pay most of my bills online anyway.. If your credit card is through MBNA, like mine, you can pay your credit card bill online for free. And, that's just one example -- I'm sure that many (most?) other credit card companies also have similar facilities to pay online.
Then, there's also the other utilities. Where I'm living now, heat and water are included in the rent. But, I've arranged for my phone bill to be automatically paid from my bank account; your utlility/phone companies might have a similar service, but you'd have to ask them.
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
I used to use CheckFree in combination with MS Money (sosueme) to pay for everything. I never had a single problem with the service itself. It wasn't web-accessible, and I considered that a plus.
My only problem was that once I lost a receipt for $200 and some change. Coincidentally, my auto insurance bill for that month was two cents off of that. When I went to balance my account, Money told me I hadn't payed that bill yet, but I saw that unaccounted-for $200 and figured I must have payed it the old-fashioned way (which I did periodically).
My insurance coverage lapsed for a little while because of that screwup, and I wound up getting in an accident and having to pay a lot of stuff out of pocket and nearly lost my license.
That two-cent screwup cost me thousands in the end.
As for the question: If you're going paperless, remember: "the computer is never wrong."
--Threed
Browsing at +2, or else on my Cell Phone. I see no trolls.
I use Citibank - there are a tonne of things I hate about Citibank, but their online banking is enormously convenient and I've had nothing but good experiences with it thus far. Their online-pay seems to work quite well, though I've only been using that particular feature for the past ~3 months. One utility wasn't expecting an online payment and didn't notice that I had paid, but a good loud phone conversation cleared that up. That was obviously the utility's fault, not the online payment service.
>mess. I don't think i've opened my paper statement for either credit
>card in months.
More fool you.....
I don't see why someone would pay $2/month plus $.40 per payment to use this system, when they could probably do it through their bank for free.
I use EasyWeb from CanadaTrust, and I can pay all of my bills every month, and not pay any extra fees (I do, however, pay a fee for EasyWeb, but it does a whole lot more than just let me pay bills!)
All this system seems to do is save the company who -issues- the bill some money, through the lack of postage and paper.
Of course, if you're the type to lose those paper bills and always seem to end up paying late fees because of it, this might be a great system.
"Tomorrow's forecast: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom!" - Stewie Griffin
I am considering using it to pay my Pac Bell bill every month seeing as how pac bell hasn't gotten
an automatic online system of their own yet.(least not htat I have noticed)
Pac Bell does have an automated phone service but you have to call them to get the number. And they charge you for this! lame! completly electronic system should be FREE
Was going to try Wellsfargo's auotmatic payment system but I never heard from them after I filled out their online form on two seperate occasions.
So it looks like the paytrust services are definatly usefull for these backwards companies.
-Super net pirate eh? So get rid of my bad credit
It's 128 bit security and generally pretty fast.
I'm a little wary about giving out bank acct. #'s
to other companies. Only my bank has to know about the payment info.
I'd check on the privacy policies. I wonder if they're a bit dubious.
Regarding passwords: I created a totally random gibberish password for my SFNB account and memorized it. I was quite upset when they forced me to change it.
So I changed it to something stupid then went in and changed it right back to the secure one. I'll probally do that again next time, and then come up with a new random gibberish password just from paranoia.
I accidentally got signed up with the bill payment service provided by my bank, Nevada State Bank, and found out it was a pain to get them to stop charging me $4.95 a month. I figured that since I am real bad about remembering to pay my bills on time and my late charges end up being more than that, then it is not a very bad deal at all.
The service is mybills.com but it seems to be only available through banks since the obvious URL just gives you a server status page. Well, now I know they use Stronghold/Apache. I never bothered to check before this article. All transactions with my bank and mybills.com are handled via 128-bit SSL.
So far I only use it for my utility bills, two of which are setup with this service and get paid via transfer on the date I set. The other two get checks mailed from the service on that date. I also can get an e-mail notification of the upcoming due date for the two registered companies. The minimum date for payments tends to be about four days from the entry date. So last minute bill payments are out.
They of course offer the choice to have a certain amount sent out each month. With all the horror stories I have heard about automatic payments and the fact I would tend to forget about these and spend the money, I will never use this feature.
Overall, this is barely cost effective for me, but very convenient. If you are someone with a lot more bills than me then a service like this may really worth your while.
I'm about to close my account at my bank, because their online bill paying is unreliable. I've had trouble with a number of payments not arriving on time, and these were electronic payments. It is no fun getting dunned because of your bank. The thing is is that I like the concept, so I'm going to switch my account to another bank that offers the service.
NetBank
Pros____
- 3% interest check (no fee)
- VERY picky about it's users
- no min balance
- free bill pay
- free checks / ATM usage
- free envelopes
Cons____
- VERY picky about it's users (read perfect credit)
- they used to have 6% interest on checking (no fee)
- very poor customer service reviews
- ranked like 7 in Gomez.com reviews of net banking
YMMV- I went with Wingspan but STILL want an account with these folks as well.
- OrbNobz
Ever have one of those feelings someone is reading your posts?
have started doing a long time ago. They give you a tool to actually manage your bills online. I use Quicken religiously but it frustrates me that I can't truly use it on the web. I like that I can go to a website click on the bills I want to pay and be done with it. MAJOR time saver! For $6.95, it's totally worth it! I'd pay an extra few bucks to have it manage my checkbook as well!
--
J Perry Fecteau
5-time Mr. Internet
--
And Justice for None
I've been paying bills online for about 4 years now, first through direct dial-up and latly web access. I haven't had any problems. My advice is not to go through a third party. My bank, CitiBank, offers online bill paying; which includes either direct wire transfer or they will mail a check for you. For those who are worried about giving out personal information your bank allready has it all.
I believe FDIC only insures against failure of the bank, not fraud committed against you or the institution.
As far as moderation problems, I can't help you there.
I have payed my bills Online for two years and I can't live without it. No more forgetting last day of payment or go to the post-office. Privacy concerns? Well, then you have to stop using VISA also since they track that also. Security? Well, I have a special box (looks like a pocket calculator) which generates new unique passwords every time it is used. Fortify fixes 128-bit encryption in Netscape.
And for almost a year, I also do online trading. Yeah, viva internet. But I have stopped sending my VISA-number over the net unless the company that receives the number promises that they don't save my VISA-number in a database.
I am somewhat of a procrastinator, and would often have to pay late fees for bills. I signed up for PayTrust in February, and have found it to be efficient and effective. You can set up rules for paying bills on a per-vendor basis. You can either have your bills sent to you, and post them yourself, or sent to PayTrust directly. When a bill goes to PayTrust, they scan it and post it to your account automatically, and notify you by email when they have. You can view the scanned image of your bill online. You can get a CDROM wil all of your bills for the year sent to you for record keeping. And it exports to spreadsheets and to personal finance programs. No more lost bills. No more forgotten payments. What is there not to like?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Lest any of us forget, while NT servers can be made reasonably stable and secure with work, MS software in its default configuration is generally not set up to be secure
Not to start a flame war or anything, but all distributions of Linux (all that I have worked with, YMMV) are just as insecure "Out of the Box" as NT is. Even OpenBSD, touted as the most secure OS, has sendmail and NFS running by default after the initial install (again, YMMV - This was my experience during my last install of the base OpenBSD 2.6 packages from CD.).
As Bruce Schneier has said, "security is a process". My servers must be constantly updated to protect against security compromises. Most security compromises don't come from that "'leet d00d" that the media is so quick to play up - most occur from internal employees. Protecting systems from them is a WORLD of difference than protecting them from J. Random Script Kiddie.
I bank with Wells Fargo and use their bill pay system. If the bill you paid is in dispute by the bill collector and Wells Fargo shows that they paid you. I have had them work it out with company, and they took care of everything. The only problem I'll have is that occassionally, becuase of holiday's or preset pay dates falling on a weekend, sometimes my payment shows up a couple days late, and then I get a nasty notice from the bill collectors, but I just trash 'em knowing that they just got the check a day or two late. But if one was worried about it, you could just bump the reoccurring payment date up a couple days.
Microsoft isn't exactly known for their attention to detail where computing security is involved.
Especially on the net. The Hotmail fiascos in the past, the security holes in IIS/NT.
And don't feed me this Windows Millenium crap. 65k+ bugs, try and tell me at least a couple hundred (if not more) aren't security flaws.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
I want one of these outfits to except payment by credit card. That way not only do you get rid of the headache of writing checks, but you can get frequent flyer miles for everything!
SFNB is pretty handy for paying bills online (www.sfnb.com). Most of the time they actually send out a paper check but they do it all for you, you don't even pay postage! As a college student who doesn't really live any one place right now, and who will be in another new location in a year when i graduate, SFNB is the way to go. Best of all they are cool to you whether you have $5 with them or $5,000,000. They are more personal with you than any brick and mortat bank I have dealt with!
Wells Fargo bill pay is free if you can keep $5000 in your account. That seems a bit high to me. Otherwise it is $5/month.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
I use PayMyBills.com, have been for about 6 months. I am pretty happy with em. Not really had any problems except for one day where they had a few hours down time. It's very nice to be able to pay all yer bills by clicking a few checkboxes. If you find yourself spending hundreds every month in late fees, give it a shot.
We have almost everything setup to automagically bill the credit cards not. That defeats the purpose of online banking, except there is one other important aspect. Once we get our credit card statements back, we want to see where the money is going. Organize it. View graphs of things. Collect information for tax purposes and budgeting. This is a feature that I have not found on any online bill paying site. I need to most us away from windows based financial software for this purpose. I talked to the guys at gnofin about these features and they took it under advisement. Why can't I get an apache log analyzer type thing for my credit card statement?!
My $0.02.
They only snail mail a check if electronic transfer is unavailable.
--Jason Bell
--Jason Bell
Faster than the light of speed!
I have been using the online checking/bill pay for a couple years now with Security First Network Bank (www.sfnb.com) and have been really happy with them. Unfortunitely they do not offer the bill collection part. So I signed up with PayTrust to collect my bills for me. PayTrust sends a check out on my bank account and pays the bills for me. It is great. Is it for everyone, nope! I travel 23+ days a month so it is hard for me to keep on top of paper bills. Paytrust does this for me. I get email about each new bill, and each payment made. Plus I can get a CD cut at the end of the year with all my transactions (including the bills that they received). Between the two I can travell all the time and not have to worry about if the bill is laying in my mailbox at the house. I recommend PayTrust. I have never used PayMyBills, OnMoney, or the others.
Thanks,
Scott
Scott
C{E,F,O,T}O
sboss dot net
email: scott@sboss.net
I am 39.0% slashdot pure
Scott
janitor
sdn website family
email: scott at sboss dot net
Bank One recently unvieled their plans to offer a similar service.
On-line finances and bill payments are really quite convenient, and not too risky anymore. These places ensure privacy and use fairly serious encryption on transactions.
This kind of thing, though, is subject to the same fear and hype surrounding electronic procurement via the WWW.
In reality, there are far more people who are capable of getting into your private "snail mail" (or wallet, for that matter) than who could succesfully hack a bank or steal info over the web.
PayMyBills is almost there. The amounts (variable) are available online and you can schedule automatic payments.
What you can't do is schedule automatic variable payments. Do that, and they'll have my business.
Tonight I spoke with a sales rep at (888-564-6762) regarding liability for late payments (if they pay your bill late, they'll pay the late fee), and mentioned that I was calling because of the Slashdot article. I had to explain Slashdot to her, but she said they were experiencing extremely high call-volume and webhits tonight ---and nobody knew why.
:)
I wonder if PayMyBills.com will add a 'We've been Slashdotted' button to their site?
if you are Canadian. It's Canada Post's site, you can pay bills, send secure mail, etc, etc. I've never tried it myself, I just use my bank's site to pay all my bills. Pretty nifty though.
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
Well, Royal Canadian Bank bought "SFNB", ("Security First Network Bank"), which IS a US bank, and which offers a pretty good online system. They'll do the bill payment online, although you have to log in and type in the amount of the bill for bills that change monthly... you can't arrange for the bills to be sent to them. However, the service is FREE, and in fact they are paying a loss-leader 6% on their checking account right now, so it's practically less than free! Sorry if I sound overly promotional -- it's not really this particular online bank that I like so much, it's the whole process of online banking and bill payment... it's a really great way to work.
I have two credit cards, both which let me pay off my bill online with direct deduction from my checking account. They also keep your current and past statements for perusal. I typically just pay for everything (bills, utilities, food, entertainment, etc) with my credit cards and pay them off completely every month. No stamps, no snail mail, no mess. I don't think i've opened my paper statement for either credit card in months.
Nextcard Visa
Discover
At the risk of being redundant, Paytrust's privacy policy looks very sound. They purge certain data (comments, traffic patterns) after 12 months, share only aggregate statistics, encrypts cookies, etc. The model seems very sound, the only thing your personal info gets used for is talioring Paytrust (only) and logging in case of fraud.
I live in Canada and have used Royal Banks Royal Direct internet service for two years now and have had zero internet banking related glitches.
I do question its security though. It uses 128-bit encryption so it is reasonably safe with regards to sniffing. However you login with your client card number and a password. Your client card number appears on your bank statement, client card, ATM, and interact reciepts. It is not unthinkable that someone would use an easily guessable password for internet or phone banking.
As I understand it direct payment is not nearly as popular in the US than in Canada. There are millions of those little interact reciepts hanging around, not to mention that every store keeps a copy.
I do find that Internet banking is extremely usefull. I use it to pay all of my bills except for rent, which is down the hall. The banks like it too. I dont remember the source but it costs the bank about $1.00 for each live teller transaction compares to $0.02 for each internet transaction.
I've used Wells Fargo banking for 2 years and have been generally pleased.
Pros:
1) Anytime banking - set up payments, do transfers, all on your schedule
2) Schedule repeat payments - you can set up automatic payment for recurring bills. They makes paying loans easy and eliminates forgetting them.
3) Secure - 128 bit encryption eliminates the casual snoop
4) When I have had problems (lost checks sent by Checkfree) the bank resolves them without acting like complete idiots and writes letters explaining that I did pay on time and that it was their fault for late payment. The bank then credited me the late payment fees.
Cons:
1) Many bills are paid electronically, but some are still simply sent a check via a third party like Checkfree. They deduct the amount from your account and then send a check. If the check gets lost or has a problem, your record shows 'PAID'. When you call to find out what's going on, your bank has to call Checkfree (or whoever) and gets the status. This can take a week or two.
2) Account is resolved until Tuesday morning. Since banks are still mainly 5 day a week businesses, you can't see changes online of payments/charges that occur from Friday night all the way to Monday night. Your balance updates, but you can't see the specific itmes that changed your account. This will only change when banks go to a 7 day/wk operation.
In general, I am very happy with online bill pay. With online bill pay and a debit card, you almsot don't need checks anymore.
-----
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
I've been using PacBell's online billing service for a few months. Each month they send an email notifying you that a new bill is ready to be viewed. They don't charge your account until you verify and approve the bill. So far, I've been very pleased with the service.
http://www.pacbell.com/Billing _Accounts/OnLineBilling/
- My Bank accounts (paying bills, transfering funds, etc)
- My credit card accounts (Visa, Discover, Amex; getting my current balance)
- My brokerage accounts (Ameritrade, getting the current value of my stocks, etc.)
I think this is much better than using different web pages to access different accounts. I have everything consolodated.I only wish Quicken would make a Linux port; I have to use my wife's computer for all of our finances.
My bank (http://www.fleet.com) offers online banking and bill paying. It works nicely because if it is a business they have a relationship with (Utilities etc.) the bill goes directly to the recipient the day I request. Meaning I can pay my bill and KNOW it gets there THAT day. I can also do a bunch of nifty things like transfer funds to my friend who has an out of state account and all that stuff. Overall it's very nice, but if you use that AND checks it gets kinda confusing looking at a ballance that is multiple hundreds of dollars higher than you know you have available :)
Do you Gentoo!?
I use wingspan to pay some bills online, and I haven't had any problems yet. It is pretty darn nice being able to just click off which bills you want to pay and the amounts.. no writing checks, and paying for stamps, etc...
-brain
and its terrific. I use their online bank and if you maintain a minimum balance billpay is included.
I have only one thing to say about bill pay: I havn't been late for a payment, or had to lick a stamp, close or address an envelope in about four months!
For ongoing bills you just set and forget, for monthly statements you just logon and schedule a payment.
Now if I could just eliminate the paper statements everything would be perfect.
I would reccomend this to anyone.
John
Well, that's not strictly true. A DNA pen, if it existed, could only be used to prove that you *did* sign a document. Eve, the legendary attacker of cryptography lore, could always forge your signature with an ordinary pen and claim that you signed it using an ordinary pen.
Contrast this with public key digital signatures. With digital signatures, the following assertions are true:
You cannot create a digital signature without the use of your private key.
Anyone can verify that a document is signed by you, provided they have access to your public key, and trust its source.
The first requirement protects you from having someone else forge your signature. The second requirement allows the other party to reject your signed document if the signature is invalid. Thus, you cannot sign a "check", receive services for the "check", and then refuse payment on the check by claiming that the signature is not yours.
To meet these same restrictions in the physical world:
Laws would have to be passed that require signatures to be made with DNA pens.
DNA testing equipment would have to be readily available to the masses, allowing someone to verify your signature before accepting it.
The first requirement might be workable (but who wants more laws on the books), but the second is a bit far fetched at this point in time.
Now, a question. Do such pens exist? And for what purpose?
-----
Strong encryption is only part of the solution. Even if all communications between your browser and their server is encrypted, if they store all your information in a world readable directory in plain text on the server, your information is not secure!
My dad pays on-line bills through the bank. From what I know, he gets the bill through snail-mail, pays it on his computer and then it goes through the bank. I'm not totally sure.
From what I can tell, it seems to be pretty nice. Except for one thing. He screwed up on something and he has had a hard time getting the check void'd or something like that. It's a big pain in the ass that will exist for a while I think.
From that, it's a nice little thing. Convenicnce more than anything. But if you get into trouble, then you maybe in trouble.
"...a more reliable company like Microsoft.." Do you actually expect me to buy this? What am I basing my "reliablity" rating on exactly? My experience with Microsoft products, or just their market cap and media influence? - Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Before using PayTrust, all my bills were paid late, usually when the service was about to be shut off, because I never had time to sit down and write checks. Now everything is paid right away with no hassles.
;)
Of course now I can't pay my bills because they've been SlashDotted
I'll mention that I've been very satisfied with AT&T MasterCard (www.att.com/ucs). They have current charges & past bills (PDF, html tables, & proprietary formats for Windows based financial packages) online to view. I personally have it setup to ACH draft my checking account when I go online & click pay, but they also have a feature where they will automatically draft some or all of the balance on a day that you specify every month. I'm a very satisfied customer [and they aren't afraid to issue a chargeback on bad merchants either :) ].
-Michael [Remove two parts of address to mail me]
www.sfnb.com is owned (I believe) by a Canadian bank. I think they offer all the same banking services you're used to from your other bank. (note - they used to be a US bank and were bought out by a canadian bank). I've been a very happy customer of SFNB for several years - 4 or so, I believe.
Yes, this US way of paying bills felt funny in the beginning when I was used to how it is done in Finland. Last time I saw checks before coming to the US was maybe 15 years ago in my parents' checkbook...
;) way to do it: Someone sends you a bill by mail (or to your cell phone...), you tell your bank to transfer money from your account to the account of the company who sent you the bill and that's it. You can pay the bill using an ATM, Internet, phone or traditionally by going to a bank.
:)
For those who don't know how it is done in the USA, here's how it works: Someone sends you a bill by mail, you write a check and send it (traditionally by mail) to the company who sent the bill. Then they need to deal with their bank to get the money on their account.
As a comparison, the Finnish (probably the same applies to other advanced countries
I'm not necessarily saying that the US way of playing with checks and mailing them back and forth is not good, but the Finnish way is simpler, cheaper and faster. It's all electronic, and it works. On the other hand I find it kind of relaxing to sit down for a while to open letters, write checks, put them in the envelopes, attach the stamps etc, just to stay a couple of minutes away from the computer
-jarno
They both work very well. I get my bills in the post (they still include a return envelope to post a cheque in). It took me a long time to actually get a cheque book, but I have yet to write one out. They serve little or no purpose anymore!
I've been using Checkfree since 5-17-93 according to my archive and I've been happy with it. They pay checks out of their account or transfer out of mine and if there is a negitave balance on my account they cover it for a fee. This is using compuserves network and a DOS based program (that complains that todays date is far in the future).
About web based interfaces, I don't like the bank telling me that I must use 128 bit crypto. I know the risks and I know how to attack SSL and I don't give a damn if its 128 bit or 40 bit becuase thats not the way to break it. I do have a problem tring to use someone elses system that isn't 128 bit and the thing telling me to go away. Hell their phone banking is only 13.2877 bits
For example, they can group information on age, race, social background and/or sell this data to companies to increase the bottomline with a more accurate profile of peoples spending habits. This data can then be used to define more specific target groups with commercials.
Simple question - how is this a bad thing?
I understand if you just want your privacy, there's no need to justify that. But for most people is it really a bad idea to let companies know what you like and dislike? What's the worst case scenario?
Customizing my advertising stream so I see the new Lego release in lieu of a new type of panty liner sounds good to me, and makes sense for the comanies involved.
Why am i seeing paragraph-long advertisements(more like spam) for several banks on practically every other post on this article?? Something's not right here.
Mostly, I just like to know exactly what's going in and out of my accounts, and when. (Probably why I hate cheques too)
Intolerant people should be shot.
I think that almost every innovation in American banking tends to be old hat here. I've actually gone into a bank maybe once a year for at least the last 5 years. At this point, I hardly even need to use the bank machines either, except to deposit cheques (I don't feel comfortable with direct deposit for my money, and I definately don't like it for bills). When I get a bill in the mail, I call my bank, punch in my card number, guy asks for random letters out of a password, and then I tell him "pay annoying phone company scum $35.67" and then I'm done. Not only do all our banks have online / telephone banking available as nuprin mentioned, there are a couple of banks that consider themselves "online banks" MBanx and President's Choice (yeah, like the cookies) are two examples of banks who offer all kinds of banking services. They just don't have any actual physical branches (They do have kiosks in Safeways and Superstores, though). I'm not sure about MBanx, but PC is almost completely fee-free (only fee is to use a bank machine that doesn't belong to CIBC, who is the traditional bank that actually holds my money).
Intolerant people should be shot.
*shudder* Real Live Bank People?
hmmm, sounds almost oxymoronic...
Intolerant people should be shot.
When I changed addresses for my auto-insurance (you have to have your bills snail mailed to a special PO box like address), my carrier decided that I had moved from Washington to California, and adjusted my rates accordingly. A quick phone call, and a slow explanation resolved that problem.
Otherwise, just keep in mind that you're billing address is now at the company that does your online billing (which they should give you), so when you purchase something online via your credit card, you now have to enter a different addy for the billing address.
Otherwise it's been great. Never had a problem with not having a paper copy of my information. And if I was one who really cared about archiving the information, PayTrust will sell me a CD with images of all my bills for the year once a year, which in my book sure beats keeping the bills in a box somewhere.
-- It is too late for the pebbles to vote, the avalanche has already started.
I too am one of those that makes a relatively good living but, because of a shortfall in the responsibility department (or something) I fail to consitently pay some bills in a timely manner and, as a result, my credit rating has suffered.
I've decided to wait untill my small bank gears up their Billpay service rather than hook-up with Yahoo or other specialty service. My Bank is supposed to get the show on the raod early this year, but they've been dragging their heels.... I'm getting a bit irritated with them: I look forward to the day when I can set all of my bills on autopilot and let the bank do the work.
I'm not certain if my Bank is developing their own system or will be using a web-based method. I prefer the web-based: it seems tried and true.
One big perk for those who EBAY: winning bidders can use their Online Billpay service to immediately send payment to the seller: no need to go to the bank for a money order or to the post office to mail the payment, or even to spring for the cost of a stamp. I win at least 3 or 4 auctions a week on EBay: keeping track of those that have been sent and those pending is both tiresome and time consuming. With Online Billpay all one need do is enter the payee information and include a note in the comments section speciying the auction #. The bank does the rest.
I've been told that there is a drawbcack to this method: the envelopes the bank uses look generic and are occasionally assumed to be junk-mail and tossed in the trash by unsuspecting sellers. It's important to inform the seller that the payment will arrive in a business-style envelope with typewritten printing rather than the common scribbled EBay buyer's scratches.
I have an experience using Yahoo bill pay aka CheckFree. As far as the price goes, I think it is perfectly reasonable. A couple of cents more than the price of a stamp.
:-(
I did however, have a more serious issue. When signing up, you type in the account number that appears on your regular checks. They then use this number to print their checks. I assume this works with most accounts; however, it didn't work with mine. For some reason, my regular checks have some extra digits in the account number that don't cause problems except when CheckFree tries.
So I send out payments for all my bills. Within two months, I have my landlord threatening eviction, and AmericanExpress has now turned off my account (Which turned out to be the biggest pain because I use that card to pay many other bills automatically). I believe that my reliability as a debtor has been seriously wounded. I'm quite certain that I won't be able to buy a house for another 5 years now.
In response, I sent some nasty email to CheckFree. They called me up and worked with me to figure out the problem (which took them a few months to figure out in turn). All is well for me now, but I recommend that anyone who wants to use this, try sending a $10 check to a friend first. If it doesn't go through, you might be down one friend, but at least you will still have electricity.
s
Y'all should look outside of the USA for people who've been doing this a while. I've been involved in a project with http://www.arc.net.nz/ for paying bills online.
:)
It was a pretty cool project; the real goals were to make it easier than paying bills the normal (paper) way, cheaper, and friendlier. It's pretty much succeeded, and been a blast to work on.
Security was (and still is) a real concern. The backend magic to make this thing sing and so on was fairly hairy, and the interfacing with banks and billers is - well, let's not go there. Suffice to say that _everyone_ has a "better" way
Will it work? Sure - it's cheaper than most billpay situations with banks around here, and has met large user acceptance. I think the real kicker will be being able to do _all_ your bills online - the real attraction will be when everyone from your power company to your milk vendor will allow you to pay online.
I don't think it's so much the problem of the direct deposit technology as it is the monkey actually doing the depositing. A friend of mine told me about his employer (they use ADP?) depositing people's pay more often than they were supposed to and in one case getting everyone's bank accounts switched around. My former employer (also using ADP) screwed up the payroll for the entire company for months -- of course, that was 110% the fault of the absolute [censored] idiots in HR.
Given the nature of human processing, I wouldn't trust services like this to take out my trash, much less fail to pay car payment on time. For the most part, most institutions handle fund transfers -- phone companies, power companies, credit cards, etc. The only thing I cannot pay electronically is property taxes and my rent.
I'm in the US, and I have an account at SFNB.com. I highly recommend it. In addition to 6% interest checking, they offer online bill pay. The only drawback is that they don't implement OFX, so I have to copy and paste stuff from their website.
I use Bank One, (and have for the past few years. There Customer Service has been excellent (at least here, in the Dallas area), and Online Bill Payments have been nothing but a breeze.
:) ), but the service that I get from Bank One has been a real heavy load off of my chest. No more random electricity turn-offs from your electric company (This was just great when I was working on a personal project...).
:)
I'm a programmer, and I have to admit, I hate dealing with money. I mean, I love money (don't get me wrong
I guess the only complaint that I do have, is when your delving through your Account Online, and all the sudden $100 is gone! Where'd it go? Luckily you can verify bill payments online, so you know exactly when / where / why everything is happening.
E-Commerce: what a great revolution
--
Homer: "No beer, No TV make Homer something something";
Marge: "Go crazy?";
Homer: "Don't mind if I do!"
arcane for life
www.paymybills.com is quite cool. Now I wish I had more bills to pay through them!
My parents (who dont live together, but arent divorced) use an online bill paying service. I guess it works pretty well.
Personally I trust the banks that offer the service. They have far more regulations to deal with relating to the security of your information. Most of the large banks offer it (and even smaller banks already have it), and many more are working to add it.
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
I do not know about bill payment but I am using wells fargo online banking (I can see balances on my accounts, transaction for last two months and I can do transfer from one of my wells fargo account to another one of my wells fargo accounts) from linux (using various version of netscape for about two years now) and I just tried it from solaris (netscape 4.5) and it works.
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
I've been using CheckFree for over 10 years now. Not the web version, but a windows version with a dial up number. The bills are always paid on time. The biggest problem is that the companies don't seem to get the check entered on the same day it arrives.
I will avoid WebBased mail as long as this software keeps working.
I've been using the online bank USABankShares for all my bills. It's totally free - in fact they pay you, by offering 5% interest on a checking accounts. When I get a credit card bill, I use the web site (or the phone system) and set up a payment for a few days before the due date - and then forget it. USABankShares will automatically send the payment on the date I specify. In addition you can set up payments to whoever you want - so I set up my ISP there, and it sends a regular monthly check to them. And best yet, you actually recieve the bills back in your monthly statement! So none of the problems of cancled checks that the other places have - you get the checks with your statment. Did I mention it's free? :) Minnimum balance BTW is 1$ - I think most people can manage that :) You get 5 free ATM withdraws (up to 2$ each) per month - they reimburse you for the transaction fees the ATM's charge you - it's great - you can go to any ATM you want - you don't need to look for one from your bank. PS. I just like them - and I find it odd that people will charge you for what you can get for free. If you are wondering why they do this, consider that processing check is the most expensive part of running an online bank. By letting them write the checks for you, they can encode all the payment data they need right on the check - so they don't need to processes the check manually. Instead they can do it completely automatically - dramatically cutting the cost of having a human record the payment ammount - it's worth the 33cent stamp and the cost of the paper.
-Ariel
I've been using the online bank USABankShares for all my bills. It's totally free - in fact they pay you, by offering 5% interest on a checking accounts. When I get a credit card bill, I use the web site (or the phone system) and set up a payment for a few days before the due date - and then forget it. USABankShares will automatically send the payment on the date I specify. In addition you can set up payments to whoever you want - so I set up my ISP there, and it sends a regular monthly check to them. And best yet, you actually recieve the bills back in your monthly statement! So none of the problems of cancled checks that the other places have - you get the checks with your statment. Did I mention it's free? :) Minnimum balance BTW is 1$ - I think most people can manage that :) You get 5 free ATM withdraws (up to 2$ each) per month - they reimburse you for the transaction fees the ATM's charge you - it's great - you can go to any ATM you want - you don't need to look for one from your bank. PS. I just like them - and I find it odd that people will charge you for what you can get for free. If you are wondering why they do this, consider that processing check is the most expensive part of running an online bank. By letting them write the checks for you, they can encode all the payment data they need right on the check - so they don't need to processes the check manually. Instead they can do it completely automatically - dramatically cutting the cost of having a human record the payment ammount - it's worth the 33cent stamp and the cost of the paper.
-Ariel
When I get a credit card bill, I use the web site (or the phone system) and set up a payment for a few days before the due date - and then forget it. USABankShares will automatically send the payment on the date I specify.
In addition you can set up payments to whoever you want - so I set up my ISP there, and it sends a regular monthly check to them.
And best yet, you actually recieve the bills back in your monthly statement! So none of the problems of cancled checks that the other places have - you get the checks with your statment.
Did I mention it's free? :) Minnimum balance BTW is 1$ - I think most people can manage that :) You get 5 free ATM withdraws (up to 2$ each) per month - they reimburse you for the transaction fees the ATM's charge you - it's great - you can go to any ATM you want - you don't need to look for one from your bank.
PS. I just like them - and I find it odd that people will charge you for what you can get for free.
If you are wondering why they do this, consider that processing check is the most expensive part of running an online bank.
By letting them write the checks for you, they can encode all the payment data they need right on the check - so they don't need to processes the check manually. Instead they can do it completely automatically - dramatically cutting the cost of having a human record the payment ammount - it's worth the 33cent stamp and the cost of the paper.
-Ariel
I've been using PayMyBills.com for a few months now, and luckily, this ability isn't lost at all.
With PayMyBills, you can write in the "memo" field on a the check by filling in the text box in the electronic checkbook screen. That way, you still have the opportunity to include your account number, a note like you described, or virtually anything else.
I really like using the online service, because it reminds me when I have payments due (I'm known for forgetting such things), and it's easier, mentally, for me to part with my money online than it is to physically write a check.
OK. You got me.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
Yes, but point number 4 is ludicrous. The very concept that they have to snail mail cheque sis insanity. Why whouldnt they just electronicaly transfer the money?
Are you talking about BankOfAmerica? I have been using their online bill paying for about 3 years now. I don't need any special software, everything works off the web with both Netscape and IE. You don't need a special kind of account and there are no special charges.
About the only thing I can think of you needing is a Versateller account for which there is a small fee unless you have a regular direct deposit set up to your account.
You should call and ask about HomeBanking
Mmmm.. Donuts
The basic method is that, after you set up all of your accounts, you fill in a form and tell them to write a (virtual ?) check on your account. This works, but isn't as good or convenient as it should be.
The problems I have with Check Free are:
- The web interface is a bit kludgy (but it works, and the quick-pay option is reasonably quick)
- You have to keep re-entering your PIN every transaction, which gets to be a pain.
- Few companies do online billing (actually a lot of them do, but only one of the companies I need to pay uses Check Free)
- Integration with my credit union account is non-existant. I have to download a QIF file, import it into quicken, purge any duplicates, log onto a different system to see my credit union account, download another QIF from the credit union,
.... It ends up being faster and easier than keeping paper records, but not nearly as fast and easy as it could be.
One very nice feature is that you can set up a payment to occur in the future, so that you can keep your money as long as possible and don't have to remember to mail the bill at the last minute.Overall it saves me some time, and costs about $0.05 more per bill than paying by check, but they could (and should) do a much better job.
Fred
It's bad enough that they're getting your spending habits and access to your bank account. I suggest carefully reviewing their privacy policy before deciding to use.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Oh yeah, well I live in the Secret United States of America(TM) Lunar Colony, yes the rumors are all true, and we simply pay our bills by Telepathy. And we implant small beowolf clusters into the neck-fat of our dogs, they determine when he's gonna pee, and my robotic butler immediately takes the dog outside (outside, as in the Earthlike Park, in the center of LunaCity, not the actual outside, as that is a vacume and would be fatal).
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Anyways, I've had good results by paying bills automatically using the Visa/Mastercard/Whatever check card that is linked to my checking account. The bill collector (the local newspaper, say) just bills monthly to that credit card number, and the transaction comes out as a withdrawal from the checking account. Easy one-time setup, and NO CHARGES from the bank. Some companies still send a monthly statement, others don't. Either way, it's one less check to write, and life is just that much more beautiful...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
My credit union, The Pennsylvania State Employees
Credit Union, has had an electronic bill pay
service for years now. Right now they are totally
web-based and it rocks. You wouldn't think it but
these folks are on the absolute cutting edge of
technology. Since most vendors still end up
wanting a check anyhow, PSECU will send one. Once
it clears my account (note that the funds aren't
taken out until the merchant cashes the check
rather than when I write it) PSECU digitizes it
and scans it for viewing via their web site.
Similarly they now upload monthly statements as
pdf files for viewing. So basically I can see
the physical check (front and back) and see my
statement.
PSECU also has auto-pay and a list of merchant
addresses about 10000 miles long. I love these
folks. I've had an account with them since I
turned 18 and I will never in a million years move
to another financial institution. Hell I sent an
email to them yesterday at lunch and before I left
for the day I had a personal response from their
CEO. They are the bomb. Nine years of flawless
service.
Here are some of their services:
on-line bill pay
on-line visa statements
on-line loan application with 1 hour approval.
128 bit SSL 24x7 banking
funds transfer
pretty much every other bank service too.
So anyhow, I heartily recommend you find a credit
union. You'll save the gouging at the ATM and will
probably save a point or two in your car or
mortgage loan. Just because they are low profile
non-profits doesn't mean they aren't kicking the
ass of every commercial bank in sight.
I love these folks so much that even though I
now live in Las Vegas I still use a bank 2000
miles away. Just like on the web, for this
credit union distance is really menaingless.
These folks get it.
--chuck
Anyway, I've been using Royal's online banking for over 2 years now. I love it!
With RB's online banking I can:
I'm not sure if there is a charge or not but I get it free with the account I have.
--Clay
Here in the US, FirstUnion has a bill paying service. I belive NationsBank, I mean Bank of America (or are they something else this week?) provides the service also.
I've been using PayMyBills.com for the last six months or so--
You change all of your billing addresses to PayMyBills' address, and they actually scan your bill and enter it into their system...
Which lets you.. View your bill, pay X dollars, Tell them what day to process it (usually gets mailed same day), etc.. They even warn you if the date you entered would make the bill late, or if the amount you pay is not enough.
Because I was one of the first subscribers to their service, I was awarded a free lifetime subscription ( I think ) that allows me to pay up to twenty-five bills a month. I am very happy with the service!
Here is an excerpt from their privacy statement:
We will never sell any personally identifiable information to a third party for marketing purposes without your consent. We will only disclose information to third parties about your account or the transfers or payments you make: a) where it is necessary for opening or maintaining your account, or for completing transfers or payments, b) if lawfully required or c) if you request or authorize it.
As someone else mentioned, I was spammed by Paytrust. I was thinking of signing up until that.
Been there done that. Today its allmost impossible to find a normal bank office because they are getting shut down and the service fees on those that are still left are raising the service fees to the roof just because they are trying to get people do their banking online.
--
yush
There are other problems with Wells Fargo. Like the previous poster said, the funds must be in there sooner than normal. The 5 day travel time is no big deal (I assume this is one method of them making it profitable, and I really don't mind).
But, this is my major beef with them:
From the second the money comes out of your account, Wells Fargo records the bill as paid. Of course, there is a 5 day delay before your creditor receives payment, and possibly a bit longer before they say that you have paid.
This means that Wells Fargo is claiming to have paid something long before it is actually paid. They need another possible entry for the status column "payment allocated and pending" or some such.
I have lodged my complaint with them, and if you use Wells Fargo, please let them know.
Along those lines, do these other systems provide more accurate, and up to date record keeping?
t
I've been using Netbank. They provide the service free of charge. I've heard that Netbank is actually processing its transactions through checkfree, which normally charges $10.00/month. I've had no problems, but the lack of a check in hand may cause a little confusion for smaller companies that rely on the physical check in their accounting procedures. Netbank provides free checks (the paper kind) for cases like this. Overall electronic checking has been excellent. If the recepient cannot accept the electronic transfer, a paper check is printed and mailed to them. I don't even have to buy the stamps.
Not if you're using a "reputable" online bank. If your online bank is FDIC insured, your personal level of risk is not significantly higher than if you had money in a brick and mortar bank that got robbed. (The RISK is slightly higher simply because it would be more possible to steal all of a bank's money online. IOW, an online robbery could conceivably exceed what the FDIC could readily pay.)
Another cool service is paypal.com. It allows two parties who don't accept credit cards to use a credit card for a transaction. It works very well and is perfect for online auction transactions. Any, hey, you get $5 for signing up!
Dave
Don't all banks provide this option? My bank has a web-based service for free (well, wrapped up into their monthly charge). It works with either your 16-digit ATM card number or a cookie you explicitly tell it to save, plus two passwords. If you don't save the cookie, you can use it from any browser. (though they don't advise using a browser with 40-bit encryption).
My previous bank had a similar service, but required their custom software, and a hefty service charge.
My only objection to the Canada Trust system is that my wife and I cannot set each other up as bills to the other. To hand off money to someone else requires either a phone call or a next-business-day service.
wingspanbank.com also offers free bill paying service for their customers.
The biggest annoyance for me was the delay time on every check you write. When you write a check, you typically have at least a 6-7 day wait before it will go out. If you are on top of things, this might not be a problem. I found myself periodically "discovering" a bill I set aside, and had to manually write a check anyway to get it out quicker.
The upside to that, is that they establish electronic relationships with many companies, and often the check is delivered instantly on that day, in some cases making it quicker.
Unless you pay a lot of bills, the minimum fee is higher than you will pay for postage. For some, maybe the convience is worth it. For me, I write so few checks, that it's easier for me to just handle them as they come in.
At least with my bank, I periodically had problems connecting to the site, and during this time, I couldn't check on the payment status, or write any new checks. Mostly just a pain. I have no idea if it was the banks problem or the services.
Like I said, it was worth doing as an experiment over the past year, but I recently cancelled my subscription. I decided that doing things the old fashioned way seemed to work the best for me.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
1. The current online bill paying services are currently taking advantage of the clutter of snail-mailed bills and the lack of support of the billing parties (payees) to provide online payment as a remittance option. Eventually, I hope, more and more payees will support online payment and eliminate paper completely.
2. In order to do #1, the payees should have a secure site that allow people to just go to a web site and pay for a bill. They should allow this even without allowing a user complete access to his/her account. I pay my auto-insurance through my auto-insurance company's website, and they allow you to specify a policy number and credit card information to pay the policy, without necessarily having to log in the get access to the user account. In addition to an interface that allows this, they should also support some kind of XML-based B2B transaction exchange (like EDI) that allows a bill paying service to send payment transaction information to them, and accept that as remittance.
3. Once #2 is doable, then the user should be able to go to the payee's website (or through some other previous arrangement), specify that a certain bill payment surrogate service is authorized to pay bills on the user's behalf. The bill payment service should have the ability to negotiate this with the payee as well, using the same exchange protocol to send authorization for payments, etc.
The result of this is that people can then use their own favorite bill payment service to keep track of bills and expenses. The bill payment service can automatically receive bills electronically, present them to the user, e-mail the user when they arrive, and allow the user to authorize payment, send the payment authorization information to the payee, all without paper!
These are just some of the things I could think of right off.
Check your bank to see if it's offered. All of the bigger and most of the smaller all offer one form or another.
They have to, to stay competitive in this country
They are a "no-fee" virutal bank tied to CIBC.
I have been using them for quite a while now to bank and pay my bills online, phone, bank machine, whatever, and they have been very good.
The only fees they actually charge is when you use another banks machines. Otherwise, there are no fees for paying bills.
I use wingspanbank.com, and they have free bill payment online. Overall they have been nice to deal with, and I can use BankOne ATMs for free as well. (nice if you live in chicago) Chris
Here over on the west coast, I use the TD bank's online web access system.
Things you need to use it?
-A TD bank account
-Internet access
-A 128bit encryption browser
-To sign up.
Ease of use? Damn easy, I can pay all my bills being BC Hyrdo, Rogers/AT&T, Cable (both tv and cable modem), payments to other bank's bank accounts, put extra money into my RESP (registered education savings plan [for my son]) and can place payments to over 70,000 other companies.
I can check my account balance, what my minimum payment is going to be, a nice list of all my transactions within the last six months (per account).
There is no charge for using TD web access, and as they are the bank that I use there is no privacy concern as they already have all the information on me they want anyway.
Did I mention it's really easy to use? With my paycheck being direct deposit, the only reason I go into a bank (and to use a machine at that) is to deposit cheques.
Why spend 20min going to a bank, when you can do everything you want in 5min at home.
Im using paymybills.com with good sucess. They sent me address change labels, Everything. Really easy. Its like 8 bucks a month for 25 transactions and 50 cents for each additional. I can just let the junk mail pile up in my mailbox. Makes life simple. I highly recommend it. If i want to see the bills they provide them in pdf. Makes life easy.
Her in Norway, almost every bank has a "netbank" as it's called here.
I've never had any problems with this. When I pay a bill, first i log in with account name and a passcode for this (over a HTTPS connection).
Then, when I pay a bill, I have to key in another code from a code-card they send in the mail. There's a different code for each transaction. When the card is empty, they send me a new one.
And the money are on the other company's account in the second i press Send.
Of course, there's somethng to be said for not using credit cards...
Cheques work nicely for me, and I'm never stuck with interest rates and never tempted to spend more than I can afford, whenever absolutely neccasary (i.e. e-bay) i can allways aquire a serialized money order and use that instead, in which case i only risk losing the value of the money order and not whatever some hacker can manage to spend with it.
And for the really paranoid, you can allwyas sigh your cheques with a DNA pen, the ink's got your genetic code in it, so it's painfully easy to prove that you did or didn't sign it.
-Ma Tin-Yuan
Who's sick of being called "Martin Young" by stupid american buisnessmen who don't listen carefully...
Find a local credit union that has the Bill Payer service. You not only can do all your banking on line, including paying bills, for an extremely low or no fee, YOU OWN THE FINANCIAL INSTITUTION YOU ARE USING!! In Tallahassee, there are a number of Credit Unions offering this service. If we/ve got it, I expect most parts of the USA do as well.
I use paymybills also... and I've had mixed results.
Twice (in as many months) they have "delayed" processing a bill becaise they don't have enough staff to accomidate the demand for thier service.
Obviously this is unacceptable.
I do enjoy the convienence. I also travel alot, and being able to recieve all of my bills in a central, on-line place, and pay on a scedule or at my leasure, is EXTREMELY benificial.
- matthewk (MSK2)
I've been using paymybills.com for a while. They actually waived their fees for all subscribers (as of a couple of months ago) for the next year, so it isn't costing me anything. And boy is it convient. They scan all your bills in and you can download them as pdfs if you want a copy. I'm really bad about opening snail mail and paying bills, but doing it online is so easy that I'm paying them as soon as I receive them.
I am not a huge fan of most of the bill payment systems. Instead, I would prefer to pay most, if not all, of my bills by credit card. Wait! It's not as crazy as it sounds, especially if you are like me and religiously pay off the balance every month. I have a generous grace period, so I don't see any additional fees and, best of all, I get 1% back on all of my purchases. This way my money stays in one place and continues to earn interest. I also get a nice monthly report (bill) that summarizes my spending habits.
In a perfect world, I'd only have to write one check a month. Unfortunately, I have only been able to pay by cable bill (by phone), my phone bill (on the web). My electric company said that they would be accepting payments via the web soon. Now if I can just figure out how to make my rent and car payment by credit card...
"He was a wise man who invented beer." -- Plato
I've been using Yahoo! Bill Pay for about two months now, and I love it. What used to delay my bills -- not wanting to spend time writing the damn things out -- is no longer an excuse. It takes about five minutes for me to log in and schedule a group of payments.
If a payee can recieve direct funds transfer, Yahoo! will apparently wire the money straight from your account to the recipient. Otherwise, they print a check for you and mail it to your creditor.
When combined with a web-based interface to your bank accounts, the power/usability of these systems are great.
Thus far, I have no complaints.
blog |
My main concern is regulation. Specifically who regulates these company. What insurance do you have if one goes TU and has your money? how do you get it back? Can one guy decide that he'll funnel all the cash from his customers to a undisclosed bank account and disappear with all his customers money? If that happens how do I get my money back quick enough to satisfy my debtors? Now doing the through a regulated bank and doing this is in all likleyhood ok. But FlyByNight Auto Pay co. might be a bit riskier.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think everyone might be overlooking one important point. Yes, it's possible to have your credit card information stolen over the net. What you have to realize is that brick and mortar cc payments are just as vulnerable to being lifted. The clerk sees your information, there is a hard copy of the transaction made (usually with your cc info on it), and there's always the possibility of the card being physically stolen.
I strikes me as a "pick your poison" sort of deal. People are quick to bash online commerce but I think credit cards are the real problem. They need some sort of authentication system in place before I'll fully trust them.
love,
br4dh4x0r
Quicken runs extremely well and you can't beat using Linux' underlying networking for the online banking features. The only thing that's really slow is backing data up to floppy.
Michael J.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
Once you have the payee list, you can set up payments very easily. For things like rent, you can set it up to automatically pay every month. For something like a credit card bill, you can have it "remind" you every month when your payment is due.
Now, I basically log into the site every time I get a bill. The first thing I see is a whole list of all my upcoming payments and reminders. Then, it is butt-easy to add a payment for my new bill, and then I'm done.
One of the cool things about the Yahoo thing is that if your "payee" accepts ACH payments (Automated Clearing House ? - electronic) payments, then the payments will automatically be made electronically. Otherwise, they will cut a check and send it. The check is just like a normal check - it is "from" your account and "to" the payee - with your account number on it. So, if your bank returns cancelled checks, you will received all of these cancelled yahoo checks along with any others you may have written.
The main problems that I have come across have been reported and fixed. The only problem that still exists is that there is no way to keep track of your checking balance through the site. So, if you schedule a bunch of payments that you can't afford, your checks will just bounce and you'll be charged up the ass by your bank. Other than that, no complaints from me.
The service does cost $7 a month which may be a big deal if you're not going to go 100% with this. Myself, I don't even have any checks for my account. Every check I write comes from Yahoo. The $7 is probably about what I would spend per month between stamps, envelopes, and late payments.
Highly Recommended!!! A++++!!! (Ok, I'm also addicted to Ebay)
A choice of masters is not freedom
I think that way down underneath this feature there is an engine from CheckFree. I am not sure that PayTrust has anything to do with it. They certainly don't mention it on their web site.
I did some consulting with Checkfree (on one of its other products) 2 years ago when the bill payment and yahoo deals were first getting going.
The only drawback is depositing funds by mail? If you have an ATM card, maybe it would be worth the service charge from another bank to use their ATM for deposits.
I just want it completely understood that any FUCK who thinks of themselves a moderator and then rates most of the ignorant fucks who have something to say more than a -36 can go fuck themselves!@
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Check back with BofA now, they don't charge anymore, likely because they make serious bank on the float..
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
I'd rather receive more targetted mail. If less mail is sent to me, then I'm helping the environment.
I really don't think any of my purchase data will come back to haunt me. At least I don't expect to testify before congress because of it anyway .....
"Yes, Senator. It's true. I do prefer Ranch flavored Doritos over regular."
(Everyone begin typing your "How naive of you" flame now ... ;-)
---K2K was here---
I've been living in Germany for a few years now and we never touch a check. It's nice that I can pay bills online, set up payments to pay automatically monthly a set amount for things like rent and also be able to give people my account number so they can put money in my account with no hassle from any other German bank. The only down side I saw is the one time I didn't receive payments for 2 months from my employer due to a transaction error, my bills got payed anyways until I went over my over-draft limit (which by the way is equal to twice that of one's monthly income). I didn't pay attention to the fact that the paychecks weren't coming in because it's easy to get lazy and not check my account, even if they do mail monthly account info. But here it works really well and has for years.
I checked out mybills.com, just to see what the hype was about and immediately started seeing advertisements while I was browsing refering to my (non-existent) debt problems. THATS NOT ALL! When I got to work the next day I saw the same time ads, and my wife saw the same type ads at her work place as well! I don't mind info about me being sent out. I have nothing to hids, but some dumb tool somewhere saw bill next to my name and sent out I have debt problems. This is kinda like slander. :( JON
JON
Well I have to be honest the ease of paying bills online is great, no writing checks, no stamps, no mailing delays, However after seeing James Bond Golden Eye (which I think was pretty lame for a James Bond film) I started to become more concerned about a paperless existence. I want to have an audit trail that is paper and digital! that way I won't get screwed over. Think about it. if you had purchase 10,000 shard of M$ in 1978 today it would be worth many millions of dollar but since you're don't have a stock certificate you screwed (dramtatically over simplified.. I know) thougts
I've only used the systems provided by the credit union I use. The original system used a direct dial-in, so I had no security concerns with it. I've just recently gotten onto their web based system. I feel more secure knowing it's going straight to my financial institution. Don't think I'd ever use an outside service.
I still receive my bills, but can pay them online directly from my institutions web site...what's the difference between the online bill pay services and the online bill pay services that my financial institution provide?
sleep == good;
I started to use a bill paying service about two
months ago. The service I use charges a monthly
fee--I felt more secure with that option over
the ones that did it for free because they have
an obligation for some level of service...they
are taking my money.
I'm concerned about their suceptiblity to hackers
and dishonest employees. What's to prevent some
criminal crack addict from getting a job there
and using all that info to steal my identity?
And how will they prevent that type of abuse?
If one can memorize account info, there no paper
trail of the crime....
--- Speaking only for myself,
I've been using b of a for my online bill paying for over a year now without any problems. Of all the bills I pay, only one of them (my rent) doesn't take electronic payment, so I write them a check every month. B of A doesn't do the mail-a-paper-check thing at all. Electronic payments only, and it really hasn't been much of a problem at all.
As soon as I get a bill, I go online and set up the payment for just before the bill is due. Then, I toss the bill into the "paid" pile and never think about it again. I don't even think about the cable modem bill since it's paid automatically every month.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
1: [Technofreak]: "New feature? Sign me up! Who cares about hidden fees, security concerns, or anything else? I am wired! Woohoo!"
2: [Paranoid]: "They just want my personal information so they can sell it to marketers! And the hackers are going to get all my credit card numbers! We need laws to protect us from this sort of thing!"
Unfortunately, almost everyone in the media and in the public seems to take one of the above positions.
Key the balance:
1: It can be convenient to be wired.
2: There is no such thing as absolute security.
Take it from there.
Luck is skill supplemented by chance. ~Ketriva
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
PayTrust gets them for me and just tells me how much I owe. That's the key; all the other bill-pay services only allow you to pay a fixed amount every month, or you have to do it manually.
PayTrust also scans the bill itself, so you can read it page by page on-line.
I have most of my billers set to be paid automatically; in most cases, I just look at the total in the email they send me when they get the bill, verify it's about the normal monthly amount, and let the service schedule and execute the payment for me. My total involvement is reading and deleting an email.
In short, this has been the perfect solution for me, and has saved me far more than the $8/month fee in late fees alone. Since it's free for three months, I highly suggest trying it out.
--
Doug
Does anyone know if the online paying service offered by Yahoo or otherwise extend to people living in Canada? I could definitely use it, considering the number of bills I get each month.
---------------
---------------
JavaScript tutorials scripts
I don't know much about the security of the site(probably not great), but if you're willing to make the trade-off (or reearch the security of the company yourself), the best way to get your bills paid without doing anything yourself (like opening a new bank account) is PayMyBills.com. You change the address on all your accounts so the company receives the paper stubs - they put it all in to digital format. They send you an email when they get a bill, saying how much it's for and when it's due, to pay it, you go to the site, login and hit "pay". They keep discs of all your records for 10 (I think?) years, and you can get 'em if you're audited; statements,etc. are available as well. This way you don't have to mess with bills even if the company doesn't support online bill pay yet. Very convenient, if nothing else. Cheap, too, since it's only like $9/month for up to 25 bills.
A cute trick: Set up a recurring payment on all of your credit card accounts for an amout that will always cover your minimum. Then come bill-pay time add a quick payment for the difference. Thus when you travel, get lazy, etc. no (-)D'ho I've been using netbank.com for 1+ years. Setup is a PITA. Setup is always a PITA. I'll prolly switch to x.com after they add billpay.
I pay just about all my bills on line, however I do not use any special services. My mortage is automatically debited from my checking account, same with my phone bill & water bill. I've set up my American Express, CitiBank, MBNA & Chase Manhattan credit cards to do this also. I have my Dish Network automatically billed to my Discover Card. Just about all types of payments can be "auto payed" from a checking account, just go to thier web sites or call customer service and you will probably find the information to set it up. I also had an account at Telebank which gave FREE bill payment services for all your bills. If it was unable to initiate an Electronic payment (say to a credit card), it will mail out a check to whatever address you specify. There are other on line banks that give this service for FREE (Wingspan etc..), so I'd check them out too. Be cautious of fees though. My only personal experience has been with Telebank, and they do not charge any fees at all, with a minimum balance of $1000 and I think it's just $5 a month if you fall below that. (I do not work for Telebank or have any finacial stake in the company, this is only personal experience) I wouldn't waste my money paying for a bill paying service, there are plenty of free services out there, and I feel more will be coming.
I'm a Canadian living and working stateside for a two-year term. I've got my US-dollar salary deposited directly to my Wells Fargo account, but I still need to pay Canadian bills (credit card, insurance, phone, car payments) in Canadian funds. How should I go about this? Up until now, I've been writing myself cheques from my US account and deposting them in my Canadian (Bank of Montreal) account when I return to Canada every so often. I then allow the bills to be paid automatically from my Canadian account. I'm looking for a more permanent solution. Is there any service that sends paper cheques in Canadian funds from a US dollar account? Any other Canadians out there with the same problem? -S
My Canadian bank gives me the opportunity to pay all of my major bills on-line. They've been doing it for sometime now. The company that I'm paying the bill to must set itself up with the bank and the bank must verify that it is a real company providing goods or services. But after this is done once, I can pay them that way without any problems.
I feel relatively secure paying my bills this way (which I do for all of my bills now). For the security risk to my life, I appreciate that it's quick and it takes the entire hassle out of paying my regular bills.
I've never had a technical problem where a bill was unpaid or delayed when using the on-line service. Which is more then I can say for the postal system.
As a side note, Canada's standard postal service is providing the same types of services that Yahoo is but as a free service to Canadians. There's a guided tour of what they offer here: http://www.epost.ca/main/english/index.shtml
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
- Jeremy Fuller
I have all the FU on-line services, billpay, banking, etc (hey, they're free with a CAP account). I'm still looking at paymybills.com or one of the like because there are a couple bills i have which are of variable amounts and aren't payable by credit card or bank draft. Those ones are a pain when I'm travelling as if I'm gone for a while I have to make sure I have somebody pay my bills for me, and I don't exactly trust the neighborhood kid who always lets my fish die to pay my bills.
----------------------------
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
With the exception of rent, power (haven't gotten around to doing that one yet), and student loans, all my bills are taken care of through the respective company. no third party to worry about. I still get paper bills in the mail to tell me how much I owe, and when my bank account is going to be debited.
So now I write far fewer cheques than I used to, and spend a good deal less on stamps too.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
what the US needs is Interac like in Canada. After moving to the US, I had to get used to carrying money again. And US money is all the same colour, so at first it was hard to tell what bill I was grabbing. I still have to make sure I take a close look at what I'm handing over. Sure, there are a lot of places now where I can use debit card transactions with my ATM card, or those VISA cheque cards from the bank. But I still need actual money in my pockets. WIth Interac as ubiquitous as it is in Canada, all I needed was my ATM card.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
Qualifier:
I work as a security/encryption sysadmin. I have a very strong background in math and system security. I've developed several encryption protocols that are in process of peer review. I've been a sysadmin for 7 years, and have programmed fr 15.
First off:
[trog@pain trog]$ ros www.paytrust.com
Netcraft: [11]www.paytrust.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on [12]NT4 or
Windows 98
www.paytrust.com: Server: Microsoft-IIS/4.0
Not to Microsoft bash, but IIS is extremely insecure. Due to fundemental problems with IIS, it really cannot be secured.
Secondly, with a bill payment that does direct money transfers, you are dealing with actual money, not credit cards. You have less legal protection against fraud here than if you use a credit card. IANAL, but I've worked with them in systems design.
Thirdly, there are really no industry-wide standard security practices. Visa can audit these bill payment companies, but they can only make suggestions, and their recommendations can be(and I have seen businesses who do) completely ignored, with no vendor ramifications.
Forth: A secure system is INCREDIBLY difficult to implement. It requires a vast amount of knowledge and experience that most sysadmin's simply don't have. Not that it can't be learned; it just takes a great deal of time and desire to learn. Add to that the proliferation of paper-MCSE's calling themselves security experts, and all the Internet startups who get their website up and lock the system down later, and you have a definate recepe for disaster.
Fifth: As a consumer, you have absolutely NO WAY of knowing if a site is truly secure. The CdUniverse fiasco happened because they stored their credit card numbers in their database PLAINTEXT. How pathetic.
In fact, most customers compromise their security when they connect to a secure site; the default 40-bit encryption from exportable browsers is trivial to crack.
I would stick to the old "check in the mail" until sysadmins start taking security seriously.
I wrote a very patient email, explaining how their password change policy doesn't do beans towards keeping people from getting into my account, and in fact, makes it easier, because if I have to change passwords, I am going to pick easier to remember passwords, which defeats the good passwords I had memorized.
And for a computer system, or a general purpose password, it may well make sense to change passwords often, but not for a bank account, because the only reason to break in is to steal money and get out. No one will break in and steal, say, $10 a month and hope to not be detected. They might break in and look around, and check back to get the big deposits, but only over a short period; not over several months.
A real annoying clueless policy.
--
Infuriate left and right
Right, but they don't get the float if you pay your bill immediately at the due date. If you wait 'till the due date, well, no float.
Not comfortable with direct deposit for checks? Sheesh, it's only been around for 20 years! I'm surprised you use an ATM!
By the way, posters should keep in mind that there is a lot more here than bill PAYING. The service pointed to by the article does BILL PRESENTING. So, they actually RECEIVE your bill from the electric company, phone co, visa co, SCAN it, and present it to you for payment, which you can then do. Talk about opportunities for things to go wrong! If they screw up your visa bill, there goes your credit rating.
The real problem with ALL these systems is that they are just bandaids over paper. Even Checkfree, the service used by most banks, sends paper checks to most of the recipients of its payments. Only a few recipients are set up for automatic funds transfer. Similarly, the only reason this bill pay thing exists is that people like your visa company or electric company don't have a standard way to GIVE you an electronic bill.
I've been using checkfree for about six years now, originally as a Compuserve-based add on to Quicken, now as a software-agnostic web interface. The cost is $10/month, and I only use the basic bill-paying features, but I have been very pleased with their product.
I have changed banks twice, with no difficulties, and migrated from the Quicken/MS centric dialup interface (compuserve) to the web interface, also with no difficulties.
If a payment goes astray, they will track it down for you (every time this has happened it has been an accounting error on the creditor's side - Ameritech and Commonwealth Eddison (typical old-school monopoly utility companies) were notorious for this, but the folks of checkfree did the legwork in getting the issues resolved.
The web login insists that you be 128-bit capable, which is reassuring (as there were a couple of times I would have unknowingly connected using 40-bit encryption).
All in all very nice, especially when you are travelling for seven months strait (as I used to do), or have decided to take a month off and go on safari with no possible contact to the western world. Even just residing in the States, one gets very used to the convenience of having those recurring payments (loan and mortgage, for example) queued up automatically each month.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I treat my credit card transactions like checks. If I couldn't write a check for the same amount, I can't charge it either. Simple, really. Credit cards are also nice in that the bills are itemized so that I always know what I spent things on without having to track it myself.
Unlike debit cards, the charges nicely integrate back into my checking account with one entry. Less security risk too.
What interest me more are the online friend-to-friend payment services, like PayPal...absolutely free, and you can send money to anyone anywhere--including many eBay auctioneers. And they even pay you for signing up...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
but I can speak of my experiences with Quicken Bill Pay. It has never been a problem.
Of the 8 bills a months I get, only my credit card is done via electronic transfer - everything else is processed by an actual check (telephone, electric, gas, water, mortgage). There is no problem doing any of this except for one thing: lag time.
I talked to some folks at the bank about how all this stuff works, and it is quite amazing. All you do is tell the system who you want to pay, how much, and give them your account number and the address of the party you are sending the payment to. If they sign up with Quicken, in my case, then Quicken simply sends them a tape, otherwise, they send the payment as a real check just like it came from you. Say I want to pay my credit card bill - because it is done electronicly, I can schedule a payment to be made to them as soon as tomorrow. The other stuff that is sent out snail mail can be scheduled no less than 4 days ahead of time. Likewise I can also cancel payments as long as the cutoff time has not hit, which I do occassionally when I decide to shift around who gets what money.
And it does not need to be a business either. You can send a check to anyone. It makes it really easy when Christmas comes around... just hop on, make a payment and don't worry about it. Depending how far away they are from where the payments are sent from, they will get the check in a few days.
I think the nicest part of doing this stuff though is that I don't forget to make a payment. As soon as I get the bill, I enter the payment to be made to them and that is it. I also have things like my house payment scheduled for the next 6 months.
It may cost some money to do all this, but I still think it is wicked cool.
It's strange. My account at Royal Bank of Canada provides me with an online banking site that's rather nice. I can see all my accounts, pay all my bills, my visa, at no charge.
They initially were going to charge $3/month for the service, but I believe it's now free.
Apparently, other banks up here are just the same.
As for refusing to use it.. well.. even for the $3 a month. That's $3 I don't have to spend on gas going to the bank to pay the bills. I can look at my balance before I head to the bar. I know if a cheque was deposited or not. I can check my visa balance whenever I want. All from my desk, from work, or from home.
And it is VERY convenient. for the first time in my life, I pay all my bills on time.
I mostly agree with your assessment, and I think I know why the US seems relatively behind on electronic money. The reason that Canada seems far ahead is that it has five or so big banks that everyone banks at. The USA has a lot more banks, and comparatively few people bank with big national banks. It's harder for thousands of banks to come up with economies of scale (e.g. like Interac POS).
When I am in Canada, I bank online for C$4 per month and all my payments are instantaneous. When I am in the US I bank at a little trust company whose outsourced internet banking costs US$8 per month and which, amazingly, consists of them snail-mailing checks for me!!! Needless to say, I wasn't too impressed with that service, so in the USA I mail checks or use my Visa check card.
I do all my bill payments using my online banking interface that my branch offers. This is mega convenient, I've never been so up to date with my bills until now, usually as soon as I get the bill in the mail I'll go online and pay it.
When I had to go and mail the money more often than not I'd end up with the money spent before I mailed off the check, so my credit rating still suffers to this day because of that.
I don't think I'd use an outside service to do this though, you should be able to do it all via your bank, mine doesn't charge me extra to do so and in fact encourages its customers to use this method rather than bothering a teller.
As for problems, never seen one yet, soon as I hit the payment button I get a confirmation number that I can use later on if the payment doesn't make it to the company in question.
Originally my bank was using some proprietary software package, but quickly switched to web based banking once enough people bitched about their broken software and the fact that it required Windows didn't help them any.
Lots of banks offer free bill pay on their sites. One is Wells-Fargo. And they already have all your info, so it's not like you're losing anything.
I have been using CheckFree for about 4-5 years now, via the Windows-based modem-dialup software. My bank offers it's own software, in addition to a web-based system, but it isn't as intuitive as the CheckFree system.
One thing that I love about the CheckFree system is their level of customer service - A+! On many occasions they have helped me to figure out when and where something has gone wrong (sometimes I got double billed, other times it was my fault). As long as those dial-up's work I should be ok...
Which brings me to a point I _hate_ about CheckFree - the software is Windows only! Even if I decided to chuck all of my Windows software today and move to Linux, I would have to keep a Windows box for the CheckFree software. Why? Because I track ALL of my transactions in the CheckFree software - from ATM withdrawals to checks I write (and I write VERY few checks, now). I balance everything in CheckFree, and it all works easily, with the features I want, when I want them.
I thought about going with the CheckFree web interface, but it only does the bill paying features - it doesn't allow you to run budget reports or balance your account - you have to do that on paper or in a spreadsheet or something external (and basically be doing double entry at that point, which can lead to errors). I have seriously given thought to creating some software for Linux to allow me to use the web interface, but do the balancing stuff on a spreadsheet, in an all-in-one package.
It's a real sticking point - I don't want to be able to only pay bills - I want to be able to track the cash flow as well, without two different interfaces (or double entry, or whatever you want to call it). I haven't found anything that allows this yet...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
They don't do online bill presentation (ie, the bill goes there) but paying bills is simply as filling in the amount and clicking PAY. I have a credit card through them too, so I can schedule an amount to transfer on the exact day it's due and have it credited that day.
Customer service is the best. I can deal with them totally through on-line forms and e-mail or call them if I have to.
I've never had a problem with bill paying. If someone I pay a bill won't take an electronic transfer, they will laser print a check and mail it to the person/firm FOR FREE. I don't even pay for the bloody stamp.
You also get regular checks to use the old fashioned way if you want to. The checking accounts are free and include about 20 e-pays a month if you get direct deposit to it or maintain some balance in there.
Overall, I am HIGHLY satisfied with them.
Make sure you know where the funds are being drawn from when they write those checks!
Example: I pay bills electronically over the web via my bank's site (Huntington). When I say "Pay So-n-So Co $100" the bank debits $100 from my checking account, credits it to their account, and then cuts the check to the So-n-So Co from their account. Normally no big deal, but...
Once I paid a lawn service twice, my mistake - the nice lady at the service mailed back the 2nd check she recieved from the bank. Now I can't just throw this check out because it wasn't written from my account, the funds it represents have already been taken from me. And I can't cash the thing because it's made out to someone else. So I had to explain things (slowly, and several times) to Real Live People at the bank, and eventually it worked out. But just something to keep in mind.
Exactly! I simply have my bank do some (not all, not even most) of my bill paying. It was set up before my bank even had a website.
Now that they have one, I can log in, check my balance, shuffle funds around, etc, etc. It's all free, and it's all tracable since it's the actual bank.
Paying a third party electronically and then having them cut a paper cheque just sucks.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I have paid my bills online for about 3 years now. And by online I mean by web browser, before that I used a modem and a terminal software.
All major banks in Finland offer online billing and it's actually cheaper to pay your bills online. Security is handled with SSL-encryption, user number, master password and one time transaction passwords.
- Raynet --> .
PayMyBills.com is free for me through mid-'01 due to a promotion deal. They cut a check off my bank account, so I get all the float I'd get if I'd written it out myself. And they cover postage. It's frankly cheaper than doing it myself, and I intend to keep using them even after I have to start paying for 'em, because the cost is maybe 25c a payment over and above postage, and I'm perfectly willing to pay that much for the convenience.
gomi
But, this is my major beef with them:
From the second the money comes out of your account, Wells Fargo records the bill as paid. Of course, there is a 5 day delay before your creditor receives payment, and possibly a bit longer before they say that you have paid.
This means that Wells Fargo is claiming to have paid something long before it is actually paid. They need another possible entry for the status column "payment allocated and pending" or some such.
Perhaps they should change the status to "payment cleared" after the money has actually been transferred.
Then you'll know when the creditor should has the money - and the information that he has the money.
This way Wells won't need to sound like they're doing anything less for you than with the current version, while the change will look to them like they're improving the service to their customers at essentially no cost to them (since they already have the info online and only need to get it to the display).
It's also a closer match to their current paper-based terminology. That will make the advantage more obvious to the decision makers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
your points against the service don't make any sense.
...and bill you for doing so.
1. Have your bills sent to us.
beautiful, I don't have to look at 40 bills in the mail each month, deal with the paperwork and record keeping, and remember to mail them.
2. Give us your banking information.
If you read Paytrust's privacy and security info, you'd see that they take this VERY VERY seriously
3. We'll pay the bills from your account
well, do you expect them to pay the bills with their own money?
4.
and it's not expensive at all. The take care of the postage, sending the checks (so you don't have to pay to get more from your bank also), keep all of your bill records for you and give you an easy search query and sort functionality (I'm referring to Paytrust), in addition to reminds to pay the bill or you can set a max amount and it will automatically pay the bill for you.
5. If there's a screwup, good luck.
Paytrust has great customer service, and will probably go to one of those live online customer service companies for additional round the clock service.
6. And until your account runs out of cash, you can keep paying your bills after you're dead!
Paytrust can syncronize with your checking account and give you all sorts of notifications and tie-ins if you so desire.
Beside their blatant abuse of the letter 'e', I should also point out that the image that appeared on every single page was a shot of Netscape Navigator 4, obviously caught in the act of paying bills online.
What worries me is that the address shown in the location bar is a plain 'http' address - no https, no nothing.
If these market leaders who are teaching business how to perform commercial transactions using the internet use straight plain HTTP sans encryption, I am seriously worried.
I refuse to use on-line bill paying until such time as the cost of paying the bill goes below the price of a postage stamp. Okay, okay, I'll throw in the price of the envelope and check too. One loses the "float" by paying on-line. The bill payers also get to use that "float" to enhance their profits. Nope, I won't agree until the costs come down to reality.
Trust one of the most commonly hacked websites to PAY YOUR TAXES. Even with encryptions, can they guarantee their own people won't do anything? And codes can be cracked. Even web masters are only human (except for the wonderful and godly Commander Taco, of course.) It is possible that the code can be leaked, or figured out, etc. Anything can happen in this world of ours. Just do it yourselves. It's not as hard as everyone makes it out to be.
"As many of you know, I was very instrumental in the founding of the Internet" --Al Gore to Katie Couric 3/99
"...so I can pay bills while I'm on vacation in Hawaii!"
You really know how to live, you wildman you.
I do my banking online (a swedish bank). The service is OK and they don't charge me extra for doing their work (like some others).
At one time I needed proof that I had paid a bill some months back. (tax reasons). It was an impossible task for the clerk to produce some sort of proof that the bill was actually paid. Finally, after half an hour of discussion, I got a transcript of my transactions for that period, with irrelevant lines whited out. Hardly anything that would hold in court, but luckily there was no complaint from the tax office.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
I've been using Wells Fargo bill pay for over 2 years (recommended to me by my mother, of all people). It's quick and easy, but the issues are: the funds have to be in your account earlier than usual, since the money gets deducted immediately on your payment date, even though the check won't arrive at the destination for up to a week. Also, I've had problems with companies screwing up because I didn't send in that little stub they send you to attach with your bill. (YMMV, since the bill pay services now available actually receive the paperwork for you, and may well send that stub with your payment.) Even that issue though is fast becoming only a memory; I haven't had a single creditor complain about receiving electronic payment or, as in the case of my former auto insurance carrier, continuously screw up the crediting of my payments. (Screw you Western United. Geico hasn't given me any such problems.) As far as security, make sure they strongly encrypt everything, and make sure they have a strong privacy statement.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I can't help with the float, but as for the monthly fee, skip Yahoo and head to Net.B@nk. They offer free payment through Checkfree, and no monthly fee for bill payment or for their standard checking account, which pays ~3% annually. The local banks around here (Boston) can't touch them. Disclaimer: I don't work for them, just a (mostly) satisfied customer.
Most utilities and many debt collections offer EFT, Check by Phone, and the ilk. Why would anyone need a service like this if the utility will do it for them? These services all seem so simple and offer the same features as using a credit card...or do they?
Credit Cards offer a degree of protection either via laws or Credit Card Company policies.
EFT does not. In fact in most cases you have no recourse. For example, for a credit card companies require serious credit checks to even obtain a merchant account. Payment are delayed in case of fraud, and a minium ammount of money must be left in the transfer account to cover refunds. With EFT there is no credit check. No special equiptment. In fact I can go down to Office Depot, pick up blank check stock, and print out checks if I have your routing and account numbers.
And you know what? You don't have any recourse. Sure, you can ask the police to track down the person for Check Fraud. If they have any assets maybe a few months later you can get a lean against thier bank. But for the most part once it's gone it's gone.
Credit cards and (in most states) debit cards have liability limits of 50 bucks. There will be some hassle but you know you're entire account won't get cleaned out.
But what about "honest" companies? Got a charged slammed on the phone bill? Guess what it's already been paid before you can dispute it. If they don't want to help you dispute it your only recourse is court.
People should get in the habbit of protecting check just like they protect the SSN or a credit card number.
The best solution is to have one of these companies pay your bills via a credit card. You just keep track of one single bill to pay each month.
Yesterday near my Work Onmoney had a promotional giveaway in the form of Cash and an SUV. I checked the site out, signed up, and the first account I tried to import, Blue, from American Express, it couldn't download the statement for. If I can only do some accounts and not others, what's the point? Previous experience with online banks are bad. Mispellings when I signed my own name, half-encrypted pages, etc. I cancelled the account...
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
...I've had mostly good experiences, with only one technical glitch. One of the checks they mailed (yes, they use actual paper and mail it to the payee) was malformed; it had extraneous digits across the bottom, *below* the ABA routing information.
The credit card I was paying sent it through the ABA system, and got it back with a cryptic error message; something like "Invalid draft". They promptly sent me a note saying that they'd revoke my credit card if I bounced another check (!). It took about two months of faxes, xeroxes, letters, and phone calls to convince them that it was not indeed a bounced check.
Other than that, the one thing I'd caution people about is that it makes it more difficult to balance your checkbook. If you've got infinite money in the account, it's perfect. But if you get into scheduling recurring payments or payments a month or two in advance, it's hard to know what your true balance is without finding web access and checking out the pending payments. A minor annoyance, but it does complicate life.
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
www.badassmofo.com
The software runs on Win3.1 (or higher) and requires a 386 with 4mb ram. I've seen it, and it stunk.
I'm about to switch banks anyway, since they wouldn't let my 8 months pregnant wife use their restroom. They made her go across the road to McDonald's. Wonderful customer service they have, like there aren't at least 15 different banks in our small town of 56,000.
I am also from Canadian, but living in the States now, and I still can't believe how primitive the banking system down here is. I used to expect the US to be pretty high-tech, but it seems like when it comes to any kind of consumer technology, they're anywhere from 2-5 years behind where Canada is (and many European countries as well). For example, in Canada we've had widespread high-speed Internet access for about 3 years now, and some cities have had cable modems for 4-5 years. In the US, there are still numerous large cities that don't have affordable high-speed net access. Even where it is offered, it's usually twice as expensive as in Canada. As far as banking goes, I still have a Canadian bank account, and I've used Internet banking for 4 years now. That includes payment of all my bills, and the service is free.
Down here, I do have online banking now, but all I can do is view my balances and account history, and transfer money between accounts. They don't have a proper debig card system in the States either. My bank does have VISA check cards now, which are like debit cards but can be used anywhere VISA can be used. That's ok, and a lot of people are using that now, but it's even less secure than regular VISA, which makes me pretty uneasy. If someone gets my card, they can just start spending and the money comes directly out of my account. Meanwhile, I can't even remember the last time I actually made a cash purchase in Canada - it's a lot easier to pay for everything by Interac. In the US, I constantly see people walking around with their little check-books (with ID on front). It's pretty common to see people paying by cheque at supermarkets. It's very weird, because I think it's been about 10 years since I saw anyone pay for their groceries by chque in Canada. I've even seen people pay by check at my company's cafeteria. It's pretty bizarre.
before some criminal(s) steal a lot of money from a bunch of online bank accounts. I have no problem giving out my credit card #s online, because there's a legal limit to my liability if it's stolen. But if your bank accounts are looted, you're probably going to be stuck. And it _will_ happen, eventually, to someone.
I use Security First Network Bank and it works pretty well. It's a complete bank, replacing the brick and mortar variant for me. See below for the only drawback I see with this approach.
:-) of actual checks you have written.
:-( Worst of all, they could easily send email when the check is received and when it clears, but they don't; you have to check your account periodically to find out. I left the stamp and return address off one check I mailed in, and it took a month before I was convinced it hadn't arrived (took the PO 2 mohths to send it back). Had to stop the old check, get a new check, etc.
I chose this bank over the brick and mortars about 3 years ago, because the brick and mortars use custom software, which not only does not work under Linux, but also has to be installed on a computer. SFNB works from any web browser. Perhaps things have changed since then.
There's a button on their site for "Pay Bills". It brings up a table of payees you have set up. You fill in the amount for the ones you want to pay, and change the pay date if you want, or leave it at the default earliest possible Then click SUBMIT and it sets up the transactions. I find it incredibly easy compared to writing checks, adding stamps, and mailing the payments.
Setting up a new payee is a minor nuisance. They need name, address, phone number, and account id. From then on it's very easy to deal with. You can set up regular payments, with various intervals (weekly, monthly, semi-monthly, etc). I collect my credit card, utility, etc bills once every week or two and do them all at once.
They supply an ATM card. No extra charge at grocery stores, most gas stations, etc. Brick and mortar banks will nick you for actually using their ATMs, so I just get cash back from the grocery stores.
I dump the "register" of transactions periodically in case they try to do something incredibly stupid such as change things. You can annotate transactions. They include GIFs of the front and back (I think both
The only drawback in this case is having to mail in deposits; it can be a couple of weeks before you see the funds
I don't like their password policy; it has to be changed every few months, and if you forget the new one, you have to call them up and they snail mail a new password, so there go several days at least with no access. I have tried sending email about how this does not improve security. If someone wants to clean out my account, changing the password twice a year won't do squat to prevent it. It will only stop someone taking small amounts once in a while, and then only when the password changes. In that case, it's my own fault for not monitoring my account. But they persist.
And even more minor, the data entry field checking is very anal about the exact format of phone numbers and such.
But I will keep the account, as it makes most transactions much easier, and I don't deposit a lot of checks, and don't live paycheck to paycheck anyway. And electronic deposit of paychecks happens overnight anyway.
--
Infuriate left and right
Well, it's not a problem with the service but rather a problem with how other companies deal with it. My housemate is currently looking at buying his own house. And therefore is spending a lot of time dealing with lenders and mortgage companies. One problem that has come up is that for christmass this year his parents decided that rather than buy him a gift they would add him to one of their credit cards and let him buy his own gift.
However now that he's applying for a home loan he needs to prove his credit and sources of income. And that card is causing some major problems. His mother who's the main cardholder has been paying it with a direct deposit from her bank account. And the morgtage company won't accept the card as being paid for unless they can see the actuall payments. But all his mom gets is her bank statement showing the money being transfered. And since that's from her main savings account she is not willing to provide them with the entire statement.
The lending company won't even accept the bank statements with everything but the payments they're interested in whited out. He tried sending copies of the Card bill showing no balance and showing that previous payments had been received but they won't accept that. They only know how to deal with cancled checks....and there simply aren't any.
Of course this is more complicated than normal since he's just an extra card holder and not the main person on the account. But it is something to watch for.
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
That's a good point. But one thing that I haven't seen addressed at all yet is liability. When I was given CheckFree software as a gift one year, I looked into the agreement carefully. I threw the software away when I got to the part that released CheckFree from any liability whatsoever should a bill not be paid on time.
Now I can understand there are many ways the liability would fall on me. But if I am relying on another service to pay my bills, and they introduce a delay, or send payment to the wrong party, or [god forbid] get cracked, I don't want to be the one that gets stung.
So... sorry, but no thanks. It only takes me an hour or so each month to manage my finances, so until a time comes that a bill paying service will stand behind their service and admit their fault when they screw up, I'd rather just do it myself. I retain all liability, but then, I'm the one in control.
I can see the fnords!
As former support agent for an online bill payment FI, I have seen some of the major problems with some of the payment forms. Some payments are cut as checks and mailed out to the payees. Others are made as an electronic payment to the payee. Ironicaly it seems that the EFT (electronic funds transfer) transactions are the one that are most pron to problems. You will make a payment that might get mis-applied to a different account or lost or something. You will then be required by the payee to submit proof of payment. This usually means that you have to show a front and back copy of a canceled check. When the payment is made by EFT this is, of course, impossible. A claim is then required to be submitted to the EFT originator. A claim agent will get the EFT transaction number and fax it to the payee. Sometimes it is nearly impossible to see where the funds were mis-applied. Most of the time those companies that accept EFT payments are able to fix any problems fairly quickly, but when an EFT is made that consists of thousands of payments all at one time, some fall through the cracks. The online banking industry is getting better all the time but it still needs some work. More than once the only way to get your payment to certain people is to mail it like times of old. Once industries start to have better accountability of their online payments the system will function better. I do know some people that only use online payment for all bills. They seem to be very happy with the current services.
it is better to light a flame thrower than curse the darkness. -Terry Pratchett Men at Arms
...reputation for manipulation, their abysmal quality standards, and their obvious lack of concern for security, lest we be accused of hypocrisy?
No, thanks.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
It does require an additional password beyond one's regular Yahoo! password, so that's a slightly extra level of security...but, I've come to realize nothing is truely secure
BillPay was simple to implement...we still recieve our bills, we just use it to pay them.
I can even get in through my Palm/OmniSky combo, so I can pay bills while I'm on vacation in Hawaii!
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
I'm really surprised I'm the first to post saying there's no way I'd ever let any of these folks get their hooks in my checking account.
I'm further surprised that people who are ostensibly concerned about privacy, abuse of information, and tracking via banner ad cookies are all so willing to give complete strangers the right to take money from thier account.
Although I have credit cards, I refuse to allow any automated withdrawals from my accounts, and I refuse to ever have a debit card for the same reason. If you're going to do this, think seriously about it first, and decide if your freedom, privacy, and possibly your assets are a good exchange for a little convenience. C'mon, how long does it take to pay bills with a checkbook for cryin' out loud? At least by looking at them, I'm less likely to get ripped off - like the extra $78 one company tried to take just recently. Also, as someone pointed out elsewhere, I *have* my cancelled checks - this comes in handy when Postal Service employees steal checks out of the envelope and cash them, as happened last year. I had a paper trail that helped put the bastards away for a long time. If someone swipes cash from me electronically, it's just plain gone - heck they can't even audit legitimate transactions, how well do you think they'll find fraud?
Anything that is a direct vacuum hose into your account is a real and significant risk! Just ask my brother, who shortly after graduating from college had over $5000 stolen on a debit card with no recourse. (I understand this was such aproblem that there is some recourse now, but we all pay for that fraud protection in higher prices.) The theives spent his account dry, automatic overdraft protection from the Visa kicked in, and then they exhausted his remaining credit limit. All in less than twelve hours and without physical possesion of his card.
As an IT professional, I realize that the technology, processes, and laws for performing these kinds of transactions safely and securely are years, if not decades away. Even less intrusive/automatic things like Quicken are not so innocuous: A friend recently had a very tough time in an IRS audit after his computer crashed - he paid his bills electronically and had no records of his expenditures. He figures that mistake cost him maybe $15,000. You can buy a lot of stamps for that.
I suppose the people who use online bill paying are signed up for their local grocery store's affliate card program and have debit cards. (There's a particularly insidious affiliate card program run by Randall's grocery stores here in Texas: in order to avoid exorbitant prices and have the privilege of cashing or writing a check, you have to have their "Remarkable (Ripoff)" card, which identifies you and your purchases with every use.) Where do you think that data goes? If you think they're not building a dtabase of your particular buying habits in their data warehouse, you're incredibly naive. It's none of Randall's business what I in particular buy (although my purchases are not particularly interesting) - the only thing they need to know is what everyone has bought *in aggregate* from the store, but that's not nearly so valuable for marketing purposes. You can't have privacy and that sort of data collection, which is one reason I'll never carry a smart card, like the new blue card AMEX is pushing so hard.
Bottom Line: you either care about privacy or you don't. If you do, act on it, and refuse to give up your rights (because that is exactly what you're doing if you sign up for these services.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
I personally have never used any of these services. I do, however, do 100% of my bill paying online through my bank. This bill paying is free, instantanious, and convienent. Also, I have neever had a problem with security, an unauthorized payment, or any of that nonsense.
While i live in Canada, I fid it hard, nay possible to believe that none of the larger US banks offer free online bill payment. It would only make sense for them to do so, fo rthe simple reason that it helps the customer AND cuts their costs at the same time.
I would reccomend online bill payment to anyone, but I wouldnt go through a seperate company and pay for it. Check out other banks, there must be one that has the options you need./p.I was using Wells Fargo for a while and it worked fine, but these new services are an order of mangitude more than that.
I evaluated Paytrust, Statusfactory and Paymybills and went with Paymybills. They seemed to have things the most together, and on top of it they had a free promotion.
These services receive your paper bills for you, scan them, OCR them and shred them. For me, this is the huge win, not just writing the checks. They can thus automate even variable bills while still giving you manual intervention, soemthing you can't do with EFT bills arranged with the phone or power company.
I got tired of filing all that paper, let alone writing all the checks. paymybills is going to send me a CD with all my bills at year's end for a $25 fee, and that is all I'll file.
Paytrust was seriously lacking in some areas. It doesn't even offer you an archive. Statusfactory wants $50 for the CD.
All of them need to offer instead an ability to download (or have mailed to you) archives of the actual GIFs of your bills. They might go out of business and then you wouldn't get the CD.
It would be nice if they also could handle statements like airline frequent flyer mile statements, health insurance payment notices and other things that clutter my mailbox.
They need to learn how to use encrypted e-mail and just mail me the bill plus ready-to-use URLs.
But this is a huge step forward. Though they plan it to be a temporary one. As more and more people use this, their plan is to get all the billers to just send electronic bills to the bill handlers, and that's fine with me.
One positive feature about the Wells Fargo bill-pay however -- if you use it to send an ordinary check to somebody, they get a check drawn not on your account but on Wells Fargo Bank. That's almost as good as a certified check, and it's free.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation