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The Internet

On Paying Bills Online 283

Posted by Cliff from the you-never-need-use-stamps-again dept.
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?"
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On Paying Bills Online More

On Paying Bills Online

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  • Oh, don't make me go there. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I love how everytime some company besides Microsoft does something it's this big innovative thing. But Microsoft has been doing this for quite a while already through transpoint [transpoint.com] which is an obviously superior design and execution.

    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 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Re:No Way! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.
  • The problem with Yahoo's bill paying service [yahoo.com] is that it's not free (not free as in beer nor speech). From their page, it lists $2/month, which is way more than a postage stamp.

    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 [mbnanetaccess.com] 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
    ---

  • 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.
  • >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.

    The only thing I'm missing out on is some idoit e-comerce company knowing who I get bills from. I can live with this. I can also live with not paying them some equally idoitic monthly service fee.
  • >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.

  • 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.

  • That and 6% interest on your checking account never hurt either. (introductory deal until September IIRC).

    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 [nsbank.com], 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?
  • I love how everytime some company besides Microsoft does something it's this big innovative thing. But Microsoft has been doing this for quite a while already through transpoint which is an obviously superior design and execution.

    ummmmm.... i don't see anywhere where it shows you your money bill like yahoo and [yahoo.com]paytrust [bfast.com] do! microsoft's expedia is very good though.

    --
    J Perry Fecteau
    5-time Mr. Internet [nai.net]

  • 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 [nai.net]
  • i forgot to add why i think banks suck for online banking and paytrust [bfast.com] doesn't. one of my main beefs with banks' online banking is that they withdraw the money before the check clears. if you're check doesn't reach its destination, you have to go through tons of gymnastics to get the issue resolved. first you have to explain to your biller what happenned and then you have to prove to your bank that the money didn't reach its destination which was a headache because the ones i dealt with didnt even have immediate access to that information (perhaps they were paying someone else to handle it)! the process could take as long as two weeks! after three times of going through this i went back to writing checks by hand.

    then along came paytrust [bfast.com], who takes your bills in, allows you to view it online and approve the payment. but the best part is that they don't withdraw your money until the check clears which means they probably issue a check with your routing information for the ones they mail. but like i said for $7 its worth it. i can't stand sitting down writing checks licking envelops hoping i have enough stamps etc etc etc. like i said banks should have thought of this first. this girl tells me in spain, you get your bills sent to the bank... is that true?

    --
    J Perry Fecteau
    5-time Mr. Internet [nai.net]

  • 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?
  • 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.

  • >Of course you'll never hear of a destroyer being abandoned because of a Linux problem.

    Who said Linux in ANY of those posts? !M$ != Linux.

    > No military on this planet would trust ships which cost hundreds of millions (if not billions) to an unproven operating system like Linux.

    And NT has proven itself so well. *choke*

    >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 use a Linux box to act as a firewall, quake3 server, web/ftp server, ad filtering web proxy, and X irc client. My uptime is around 45 days now cuz that's when I built it. Oh yeah, and I can recompile the kernel without crashing a single process, let alone the box itself.

    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 in the hardware department than that "unproven" linux box I have running at home. NT is bloated, poorly designed, and a pain in the ass to manage. (try getting in to kill a process on an NT machine that's had it's GUI locked. Good luck.)

    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.

  • 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!
  • Yes SFNB is that nice, for some reason they do not advertise that much, not nearly as much as some of the lesser quality internet banks... The only problem I have is that I am all TOO aware that I am a broke college student thanks to the fact that I can see the latest statement telling me I have no money....

    SFNB is great in that they have no (or very low, i am not sure) minimum balances, are more personal than any brick and mortar bank i have ever used, and pay better interest rates than almost anyone!

    www.sfnb.com
  • 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 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.
  • ok, first of all, I would tend to not trust my money with them. Second, this is not innovative, this has been going on for a lot longer than MS has had their grubby hands in the pot. Third, that is the ugliest site I have ever seen. And finally, I don't believe that companies will send you bills to their website all nicely layed out and interpretable without error from their system. BS.
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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.
  • Well, Royal Canadian Bank bought "SFNB [sfnb.com]", ("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 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.
    ----------------------------
  • And I like it a lot, I have a bunch of bills (Rent etc) that just autopay. I don't have to think about them at all. Is very nice, and the cost is about the same per bill as a stamp. (OK a few cents more).

    The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.

  • while my bank (BB&T) offers online banking and billpaying, they insist on charging a monthly fee of about $6.95 for the online banking, and $6 for the bill paying option. I'm cheap, so I haven't gone for it. Fortunately, all the utilities and institutions I deal with (power, cable, car insurance, etc) do their own auto-payment scheme, so I've signed up with each of those and have the amount of each bill deducted from my chequing account each month. So far it's been working flawlessly.


    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.

  • I do that too. But I don't have a Klein bottle. Just a bowl...and an empty Classico jar for when the bowl gets full. When they get full, I roll them and take them to the bank.

    And, as an added bonus, sometimes you can find interesting coins in that spare change. Some of the ones I've found are here [netcom.com].
  • 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.
  • 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.

    --
  • 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 [checkfree.com] 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 [jean.nu] for seven months strait (as I used to do), or have decided to take a month off and go on safari [jean.nu] 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.
  • 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.
  • I pay online via my bank, Commerce Bank [commercebank.com]. It was free to set up, don't need any special software, and it costs me something like $6/mo, or so I'm told.

    What interest me more are the online friend-to-friend payment services, like PayPal [paypal.com]...absolutely free, and you can send money to anyone anywhere--including many eBay auctioneers. And they even pay you for signing up...

  • 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've been rather impressed with paymybills. Good site, good UI, and prompt service.

    In particular, two things about PMB are very appealing:
    - they will help you expedite a bill quickly with a simple phone call
    - they have third-pary insurance (from Traveler's) to cover up to $100,000 of inappropriate use of your checking account

    -Jos

  • 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...
  • I've been using SFNB [sfnb.com] for about four years now. They were the first net bank and it runs and runs very well.

    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.

  • 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.

  • PayMyBills.com [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.
  • I don't trust anything online as far as financial transactions go! ESPECIALLY MICROSHAFT. They have a bad history of doing what they want.

    I don't like the idea of keeping my financial records on a machine I don't even have actual access too. Think about this a second. A new market can now open up. This company can now sell data on peoples buying patterns based on criteria. If you pair this with other information available out there in cyber-space, you can get a make-up of a person and their sending habits or the spending habits of a group of people.

    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. This would reduce some of the errors in existing methods to compile such data. I would not be surprised to find out that U.S. users give a SSN.

    I don't plan on going to any type of thin client, and I don't plan on moving my financial records to somebody elses computer which I don't have physical access to. Talk about big brother watching you!
  • Not to Microsoft bash, but IIS is extremely insecure. Due to fundemental problems with IIS, it really cannot be secured.

    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. It appears to be set up to provide easy access and a minimal level of security to keep users from walking right into each other's confidential data. There was a discussion of the consequences of the default MS configuration right here on Slashdot two months ago:

    MSNBC: Stealing Credit Card Numbers Online is Easy [slashdot.org]
  • your points against the service don't make any sense.

    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 bill you for doing so.
    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.
  • Just recently I received an unsolicited snail mail message inviting me to "Billings Solutions 2000 [aicworldwide.com], Moving Towards e-Billing".

    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.
  • "...so I can pay bills while I'm on vacation in Hawaii!"

    You really know how to live, you wildman you.
  • The watch analogy isn't the greatest really.

    Its more like this:

    Windows is ok on security. Everything is easy
    and anybody could probably set it up and get it
    almost as secure as anyone else...however...its
    security is not "the best"

    A unix system has the potential to be ALOT more
    secure, and more stable. However, it requires
    a competent admin. Too many places just install
    and leave it. Hell, even where I work we are
    "a few patch kits behind".

    A system is only as good as the admins that run
    it. If the admins are not security consious, then
    any system it subject to fall, especially a Unix
    box, even more so than an NT box because unix
    systems tend to run alot more services.
    (just how many NT machines sit around running
    telnetd, sshd, portmapper, a host of RPC services
    and whatnot....along with a webserver etc?)
  • > This is disgusting, this guys has had a valid
    > argument.

    Did he? All he said seems to boil down to
    "Microsoft rocks and is secure, you are all
    jealous"

    >erybody jumps on his ass and moderates him to 0

    Nothing of the sort happend, AC posts start at
    score 0. It just menas his flame bait wasn't
    moderated up.

    > I'm just sick of the Microsoft bashing, its
    > getting old, and you have no real reason to be
    > bitter except for jealousy

    Having both used and supported microsoft products
    I feel quite justified in calling them a steaming
    pile of shit.

    They have earned everything thats been said.
  • Liability and traceability!

    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.

  • 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.
  • This may be somewhat of an issue, but at Wells Fargo at least the checks stale date quicker than normal checks, and they will stop payment and credit the money back into your account after 90 days for no charge. While this 90 days sucks, you don't have to worry about someone sitting on a check for 5 months, then caching the check you wrote throwing your ballance off. I do almost all my transactions electronically now, except my rent. That is enough money that I don't want to loose the "float" if only to keep my bank balance higher (The land lord cashes the checks quickly, but at least I don't not have the money while the check is in the mail).

  • I can't help with the float, but as for the monthly fee, skip Yahoo and head to Net.B@nk [netbank.com]. 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...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I've been paying bills online through my bank for awhile now, so has my roommate, we havent experienced any problems. The only problem I could forsee is data loss and then the resulting final notices and repossesions. Oh the HORROR! Ah, its a pretty good system thus far, and their privacy statement makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesnt it?
    The privacy and security of your personal information is the foremost consideration of the Paytrust service. Paytrust will never sell any of your personal information -- contact, financial, bill history -- to any other company, period. Unlike many billers who routinely sell their customers to direct marketing organizations, Paytrust keeps all subscriber lists confidential. And, unlike many other web sites, Paytrust does not depend on advertising for revenue. Paytrust is completely committed to safeguarding your personal information and protecting your privacy.
    MMMM... now I feel all warm and secure.Sharkey
    www.badassmofo.com [badassmofo.com]
  • Is this a new phenomenon in the United States? Up here in Canada, we've been paying bills online for ages now. Just about all the financial institutions out there have some sort of online interface to do all your banking (Banks, Trust Companies, Even the CU's!)

    Disclaimer:
    I do not work for any financial institution

    Take a look at the demo of the online banking features of my particular institution: Canada Trust [canadatrust.com]
  • BOA has online account viewing, but if you want to use the bill paying you have to pay $8 for them to ship you the software and then $6 per month to use it unless you have an "Advantage" account, in which case they charge you to ship it, but skip the monthly.

    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.

  • USA - United Stone Ages (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23, 2000 @12:34PM (#1179346)
    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.

  • Re:Or the other way around... (Score:3)

    by mosch ( 204 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @01:22PM (#1179347) Homepage
    Actually I do the same thing, only one step further. I have all my recurring charges go to my citibank visa, and then i have that account setup that it automatically pays in full every month. Two advantages over your way of doing things. Firstly, I float my bills for 30 additional days, and secondly, it's an extra couple grand a month helping my credit record.
    ----------------------------

  • It seems just a matter of time. . . (Score:3)

    by Passacaglia ( 3824 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @10:54AM (#1179348)
    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.

  • How it works for me (Score:3)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @10:31AM (#1179349)
    I use Security First Network Bank [sfnb.com] 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.

    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 :-) of actual checks you have written.

    The only drawback in this case is having to mail in deposits; it can be a couple of weeks before you see the funds :-( 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 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.

    --

  • Electronic Bill pay problem. (Score:3)

    by Juggle ( 9908 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @10:40AM (#1179350) Homepage
    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.

  • No Liability (Score:3)

    by bughunter ( 10093 ) <bughunterNO@SPAMearthlink.net> on Thursday March 23, 2000 @03:44PM (#1179351) Journal
    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.

    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.

  • Re:eBills are Us (Score:3)

    by Mullen ( 14656 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @10:09AM (#1179352)
    I totally agree on this.
    I use Bank of America, which use to really good bank until about early '90's when they started buying out people and I think bought out themselves. Anyways, they wanted to charge me to pay bills through them in the same matter as the topic discusses. I don't get it. They have my money, and who I do business with is also at BofA, and they want to charge me money so I can be a happy customer!?!

    However, I think in the near future this will stop. Banks will relize that if someone like Yahoo can provide services like a bank, they will stop charging money. These kinds of services will simply become no cost additions to your account.

  • Online bill payment (Score:3)

    by marbike ( 35297 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @09:57AM (#1179353)
    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.
  • ...reputation for manipulation, their abysmal quality standards, and their obvious lack of concern for security, lest we be accused of hypocrisy?

    No, thanks.
  • It's not a perfect interface, but we've been using it for about two months now, and it does what it says it can.
    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!

  • Re:Mathematically Impossible (Score:3)

    by CausticPuppy ( 82139 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @11:15AM (#1179356)

    When I get home, all the coins in my pocket just get tossed into my Klein bottle.

  • No Way! (Score:4)

    by dublin ( 31215 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @03:41PM (#1179357) Homepage
    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.

  • Re:Can't speak for PayTrust... (Score:4)

    by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Thursday March 23, 2000 @10:28AM (#1179358) Homepage Journal
    I've been using Quicken for around ten bills a month for years and have had only a few problems.

    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.

  • Bank??? (Score:5)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot.keirstead@org> on Thursday March 23, 2000 @09:59AM (#1179359)

    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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