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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'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
The one problem I have had is that creditors will sometimes change your account number without telling you. If you don't notice the new number on the stub, the automatic service will happily pay to the old account. It usually takes a month or so to straighten that out.
The other issue I had was that I get my insurance and credit card from the same company, but from two different divisions. For a while, all my credit card payments were going to my insurance account. I was simultaneously getting "deadbeat" notices and "why are you sending us all this extra cash" notices from the same company.
The cake is a pie
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.
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