question about automatic debits/automatic billing

J

jessica31876

New member
Does anyone here use this to pay bills? I do and have in the past used it when an item says it has a free trial and on a couple occasions had that free trial bill me beforee it was supposed to and didnt always have the money there yet because I had not expected to have to pay for it at the time it was presented. Like immediately. I was told I am stupid to use automatic debiting if the money is not there...like say I set it up to pay on the 15th and its not there prior to the 15th then that is like writing a bad check because the company can present for payment anytime they would like to. I say as long as I have sufficient funds on the agreed upon date that if the company debits me before they agreed they would it is their fault and should be responsible for any charges incurred as a result. Am I wrong in that? Is it really stupid to use automatic debiting to try to save time, money and paper and to create a budget? Please tell me Im not the only one who uses automatic billing/debits to pay their bills electronically.
 
i use auto billing for all utilities and netflix. never had a problem with it. love not having to think about them.
 
yes that is why I do it too. I like that I do not have to worry about buying stamps or going to the office to pay or wondering whether my payment was received and recieveed on time but some people think it makes me stupid to do it that way because I have had a few occasions where a company would debit before they had authorization to and caused my account to go all haywire because I did not have the money for the charge on that date. My opinion is if I say I will pay on the 30th and they agree and say we will not debit until the 30th or after then they should wait til the 30th dontya think?

Like for instance Vonage only allowed automatic payments. They have it set to go through on the 30th so I know that on the 30th I will have like 32 and some change debited. It never goes through before that date. If the 30th falls on a weekend/holiday then they debit on the next day like the 31st, 1st or 2nd. Whenever the next business day falls. makes sense to me. Makes it easy to work out a budget and I save moneey on envelopes, checks and stamps.
meems said:
i use auto billing for all utilities and netflix. never had a problem with it. love not having to think about them.
Click to expand...
 
I use web bill pay, but I login and pay them twice a month. I used to work in a bank where I got called whenever someone's payment 'bounced' paper or electronic...the lesson I took away was never give anyone access to your account. There are drawbacks to 'not having to thing about things'...proceed with caution.
Oh, there were also big problems if you signed up for automatic debit and then wanted to terminate the service...most companies took longer than one would think to stop debiting payments...FYI.
 
I pay mine using online banking, I have a couple of things set up with automatic bill pay (my van payment, insurance and a couple of other things).

ETA that sometimes it takes 5 days for the payment to actually leave my account this way.
 
I use online billpay for most of our bills. I have automatic draft set up for things like Netflix and my book club and also our life insurance policies that only come due every 6 mos so that I don't forget. DH gets paid once a month though so as long as everything comes due around the 1st we're good.
 
I only do it for insurance, netflix and our mortgage payment (which is our bank, so it's no biggie). Otherwise, I do online bill pay.
 
My hubby gets paid every week on Friday. I have the debits set up on the 16th and 30th. I will check the calendar at the beginning of the month and see what is coming up due and set it up so that whatever is being paid on the 16th will come out of the approriate week that is before the 16th. This month that fell on the 10th. Then do the same for the 30th. It has worked out well so far except for maybe three instances. All of which involved a company which put an unexpected/unauthorized charge through. I have pretty much figured out though that any charge which is not with a recurring bill should not be paid like that. It just seems like that they do not honor the contract and will just charge as soon as they possibly can get the charge presented to the bank
 
I have Bank of America and pay all my bills through them. That way, nothing gets debited early since I'm telling the bank when to send the money out. As soon as a bill comes in I schedule it's payment, so I never forget.

Our Mortgage was the only thing that wasn't set up through the bank. But I never had them debit before the agreed upon date.
 
I don't do the automatic payments for anything just because with our money, I never know when we will have the cash in our acct. Dusty gets paid every other Friday but you know it's never the same day. I just pay them as I can. (Usually.) LOL, sometimes I get so caught up in other stuff, I forget for a few days. OOPS!
 
yea I forget too. I have so much to do and think about and remember sometimes I just forget a bill which is why I signed up for the automatic billing. Might do it with the bank though I use BOA also and never really checked to see what I could set up through them. Just did it with each company. We do not have alot of bills though...no credit cards, no car payment and no mortgage.

ETA:I just realized that with the bills we do have I really dont have an excuse to forget since I dont have any of the credit cards/loans alot of people have. LOL I guess iM just really forgetful sometimes
 
Bank of America has an awesome online bill pay set up. I've used it for 3.5 years now without only 1 small problem. I :wub: online bill pay.
 
I have everything but the electric bill on autopay. But it's the version where I have my account set up to send it out, not where the company is set to come and take it. That way I am in control of what goes out when & can go in and move things around if there are unexpected depleating my account when bills are due.

The electric company was set up to debit my account itself. But they did it over a date range - from the 11th to the 16th, which bore no relation to when the bill was actually due (also varying across a 7 day range of dates) and I never knew when the money would go. Then there were some instances where they took the money but claimed they didn't. So they get paid cash, in person, now because I don't trust them.
 
As some have mentioned, with BOA, you can set up an automatic bill pay where YOU set the day of the recurring payment. Obviously, it works best for payments that stay the same, so you don't have to tinker with it much.

Another option which we use for some bills, is to have them billed to a credit card. That way, you can review the charges and only pay that one bill every month. Of course, you only want to do that if you are sure you are going to pay off the card every month or you get yourself in a world of hurt . . .
 
I use AutoPay for several of our bills (Netflix, Mozy, car insurance, BofA CC bill) and the rest I pay online on the 20th when DH gets paid since his district only pays once a month. I used to have several of our utilities on AutoPay but stopped them cause our water/sewer bill (which is paid through the city building here) would always debit the money out on the 15th even though the dang bill wasn't due til the 20th! So now I just take a check in on payday so they don't get their $$ 5 days early and I don't have to try to make sure there's still $$ in the account from last paycheck to cover it!
 
DawnMarch said:
Another option which we use for some bills, is to have them billed to a credit card.
Click to expand...

I do that with our cell phone bill. It earns me reward points, and it's 1 less bill I have to worry about, lol. I tried to do it with our electric bill, but I couldn't. BOA and their e-bills make me a happy camper :)
 
Our "big" payments (ie - non-utilities) are all automatically moved from our account - insurance, mortgage, car payment, etc. And my internet is an automatic one as well because that's the only method they accept.

I'm toying with the idea of doing automatic for all the bills because then I wouldn't have to worry about remembering to pay anyone - my only worry with that is that the bills fluctuate every month so I never know if I would have enough in the account to cover it. So I've never done it, yet.
 
The only bill I use autopay for is my cable/internet bill. It's due on the 13th, Charter takes their money by the 16th of the month, it's never been later than that. It has, on rare occasion, been earlier. I account for that money (plus $20) when DH gets paid though (1st of the month), so I'm never short that amount.

Honestly, I'm just so anal about how my bills are done that I prefer to pay them myself. With the exceptions of our rent and car payment, everything is paid online. I just go and pay it at each site when the bill comes due. It makes me feel like I have a bit of control in an uncontrollable world. :D
 
autobilling is the standard over here, but if by chance it doesn't go through they just send a reminder or try at a later date...no bank fees for things that bounce either.
 
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