PC utilities forum: See you later snail mail, hello online bill paying! Advice needed.

I'm in my 70's and use Bill Payer at a Credit Union and a Federal Savings Bank. It is much easier and faster than writing checks and you have an online record at the bank when bills are paid. My big problem is I write checks so seldom I file them up because I write so few.

Also I don't have to worry about checks being taken from my mailbox and I save on postage,

I pay as many bills on-line as possible, and as many as possible with my credit card.
This way I get my credit card rewards, and I have an extra month before the payments come out of my chequing account.
I have my credit cards set up for automatic payment, so that I don't have to pay interest on a balance.
Almost every recurring bill can be be set up for this, so you have to do this only once!
It is often possible to do this on-line, on the merchant's website.
Some companies are not set up for this, so I pay those bills directly from my chequing account, as they come in,
and set the date according to the invoice's payment-due-date.This way I don't need a reminder.
Many companies offer incentives for automatic payments and paper-less billing.

CYNTHIA: I have noted that many responders are suggesting using your own banks bill-pay feature. I also think it is a good idea as you yourself control how much goes out, to whom, and when!! I never authorize any business or entity to automatically debit my account. The only thing I would like to add is as regards SNAIL MAIL. I never specifically had any problems with the postal service and perhaps the 'snail mail' terminology is the product of someone in one hell of a hurry constantly. Most of us have surely survived many years with it. Let us not forget one of the primary reasons why our postal service is in trouble - fewer people sending out less mail!!!!! And then some of us complain about not getting mail six days a week. If six day a week mail goes away we have only ourselves to blame. So, to insure the death of the postal service lets all continue heavy e-mailing and online bill paying.

aBoppa. If the Post Office was run like a business, instead of a hobby, they would do OK. Think UPS o FedEx is worried??

Hello I'm a senior citizen, and I've used on line bill payment for a long time. I solved my similar problems by banking with a bank that has free checking and on-line bill pay. Sometimes smaller banks offer this service, you should check around, it solved my problems, my bank pays all my bills and it limits the amount of places with your information. Good Luck fred436

Hello Cynthia,

There are a number of online bill paying services and many banks and credit unions offer this as well. I have used an online service for about ten years and won't go without it. The service I use is Paytrust (www.paytrust.com). I pay about $12/month for the service and here is how it works.

First, you set it up so your bills are sent to them -- this takes about six weeks for all bills to switch over. The time depends on the company you send your payments to.

Next, when Paytrust receives the bill, I am sent an email letting me know they have received it. I log on to their website (secured) and can see a pdf of my bill. I then can pay the bill in full or make a partial payment. I can also select the date I want the payment to be sent.

I also have the option to have the payments paid automatically (I don't) and I can set up most bills to be a debit instead of a check. Another nice feature is that I can send checks to individuals by selecting that option and filling in the name, address, amount, etc. This is a nice option for an organization I belong to that has semi-annual dues. When they are due, I simply check the persons name, authorize the amount and the check is sent.

Finally, at the end of the year, I pay about $20 and have a CD of all my bills for that year sent to me. They are a pdf and I can organize by month, business, etc. I have ten years of bills on CDs about eight inches high.

I used to travel a lot on business and this made bill paying soooo much easier. I am now retired, but I won't give up the service. It makes life much-much easier

I use my bank's "Bill Pay" functionality for this. It is really quite flexible and functional. When you pay a bill, it tells you about when the payment will be delivered. There's one section where you list all the companies (and people) whose bills that you pay, your account number, their address, etc. There's another section where you can list the status of all your recent payments, whether and when they were delivered and so on. You can make the payments automatic, or just make them yourself when the time is right. Personally, I make all my payments manually, because that's the way that I like to do it *smile*. This also reminds me of all the bills that I'm paying, so I don't get over my head in bills to pay.

The only problems that I've had were when the company that I was paying had changed their address, or changed my account number and I didn't notice. You do get notice of when a payment is not deliverable, at which point you can research what happened. This hardly ever happens, but it has happened a couple of times over the 5 years (or so) that I've been using this. And you can always call up whoever is getting paid to make sure that they got your payment. I did this a few times to reassure myself that it was working okay at the beginning , and I still do it for things like property taxes where it really matters that the payment arrives, and arrives on time.

As far as guarding your identity online, I like to centralize things so that as few internet companies as possible have my personal information. My bank already had my personal information, so just starting to pay bills from there wasn't very scary. You need to make sure that you have a really good password that isn't easily cracked, and make sure that you choose carefully when picking where you're going to pay your bills from...You can also get 3 free credit reports per year, which I generally use, since companies aren't always forthcoming in telling their customers that their database has been hacked. The good thing about credit reports is that stuff that you don't recognize stands out in them, and you can track them down. I've never had anyone do anything with my identity in all the years of buying stuff and banking and paying bills online. Maybe I've been lucky, but I'm also careful with who has my personal information, and like I said, I check fairly often to see if my credit has been compromised.

One last thing, the bank that I use is a brick-and-mortar bank, where I mostly do online banking (except for using the ATM's). They have something called "safe-pass", where while you're logging in they send you a code on your cell phone, and you have to put in that code as well to log in. What this means is that not only does the identity thief have to have your password, they have to have your cell phone as well, or they can't log in as you. I find that this gives me just a little more secure feeling, since I always know where my cell phone is *smile*. Nothing is fail safe, but this feels safer than just putting in my password.

So I guess that's about it. Just be careful, think about what you're doing online. Take the more secure path, even if it's more trouble. Use strong passwords, and change them occasionally. You can use one of those "password vault" applications where you have one super-strong password that unlocks the rest of your strong passwords, so you don't have to remember them all. That's another thing, don't use the same password for multiple money-related or personal information related internet sites. You don't want to be set up so that if one of your passwords gets cracked then that allows access to all your "critical" web sites.

Whoops. There's an issue that I hope that you won't incur in bill paying. With a little selectivity, it can be avoided.

There are two types of transactions that bill paying systems process. One is direct pay, and the other is indirect pay.

In a direct pay, payees enter into agreements with your financial institution to alllow the transfer of funds directly from your account to the payee's account. When you search for your payee in their list of payees, you will find out if this is a direct pay. Your financial institution has the payee's account number behind the scenes.

In an indirect pay, also called a deferred pay, the payee has not entered into an agreement with your financial institution. When you search for your payee, you will find out that this is not a direct payee. Your financial institution does not have the payee's account number. When you pay these bills, a check is printed with your name and the payee's account number and sent via snail mail. You are normally forewarned to allow five or more working days for receipt and posting of these transactions (current postal schedules). Now here's where the problems start with indirect pays.

By example, I will relate an incident that happened to me. I had my car repaired at at local shop. The shop later called me to say that the bill was short $15.00, so I said that I would use bill pay for that amount.

The shop wasn't in the direct pay list, so I set up an indirect bill pay with their address, and paid them right then. A month later, I received a phone call from the shop that the $15.00 never arrived. So, I checked my bill pay, and the bill had been paid the bill on the same day as my phone conversation with them. I called up my financial instiitution. They told me that, per my agreement with them, as soon as the bill paying system marks the bill paid, they are no longer responsible, even if the check hasn't left the building yet. My options, I was told, were (1) place a stop order on the check and pay them their normal fee (~$30.00), or (2) wait until the check goes stale (several months).

My options were then (1) to pay again on bill pay, (2) to snail mail a check, (3) to drive a check to the auto repair shop, or (4) to let the bill pay check float out there somewhere. Paying again via bill pay would only complicate the issue. So, I drove a check there, and left the outstanding check float open in my Quicken for several months.

Read your financial terms. I think you will find that they will abrogate any responsibility once you click, "Pay". Stop orders are a money maker for them. If this was a large check, such as a mortgage payment, I would have had to eat the $30.00, or leave a large balance to cover the duplicate floating check with an ensuing recovery hassle.

Personally, after this very bad experience with financial institution terms, I have completely stopped using bill pay. I only use auto transfer, credit card or PayPal. If I were to use bill pay, I would only use direct payees - no exceptions.

Hi Cynthia,

Glad to hear that you are considering using on-line bill pay. I've used it for 20 years and have nothing negative to say about the process. There are always risks associated with anything you perform on-line but with the right security for your computer (i.e. secure network, firewall, anti-virus/anti-malware programs) and practice of safe computing habits you shouldn't worry.

There are four options for on-line bill pay:

1. Direct payment through the payees website (you control payment amount and time of payment)
2. Direct debit via your bank account - (payee controls fixed payment amount and time of payment)
3. Personal Bank - Online bill pay through its website (you control payment amount and time of payment)
4. Third Party program - Quciken, Paytrust, Peachtree (you control payment amount and time of payment) *

* The following links provide information on the Third party programs:
http://quicken.intuit.com/
http://paytrust.intuit.com/
http://www.peachtree.com/productsservices/peachtreeaddons/onlineBillPay
http://www.consumersearch.com/online-bill-paying (provides a rating analysis of the aforementioned programs)

As you already know option 1 requires the management of multiple websites. Option 2 requires no maintenance other than the one time setup for the automatic debit (payment). Option 4 requires the purchase of a software program and possibly a monthly fee for administration...not to mention the associated learning curve to master the software to your satisfaction. Since I skipped Option 3 you've probably surmised that it's my personal choice.

Personal Bank - Here's a short list of benefits offered (they may vary by banking institution)

01. Secure login to bill pay site
02. Every account is listed in one place (by name and/or nickname)
03. Use the same payee information as listed on the monthly invoice to setup the account (i.e. account number, mailing address)
04. Accounts can be a business or a person with street level or P.O. Box address
05. Payment amounts are entered manually (a recurring amount can be set but must be paid on same date each month)
06. Delivery dates are set automatically or manually (a recurring date can be set for same amount each month)
07. Last payment amount and date visible below each account
08.Twenty-four Month payment history available for each account
09. You can setup an account for a payment that only occurs once a year (i.e AAA, Insurance premium etc.)
10. Bank may offer elimination of paper invoice for some accounts (i.e. gas, electric, credit cards)

Another advantage for on-line bill pay is that you can access it from any computer. However, I would exercise caution and not use public computers nor a laptop on an unsecured network (wired or WiFi). That's all I have and I believe the majority of the advice you receive in this forum will be pro-online using your banks bill pay system.

Happy Holidays!

Regarding Direct Debit (DD). When I investigated it many years ago I was advised to only use it with a fixed amount unless the payment decreased over time (and even that was not the best scenario). If one uses DD for a credit card, utility bill or anything that is not constant the payer may have trouble balancing their account. Therefore....my comment that the payee controls most of what occurs in that scenario after the initial setup. I'd be interested to read your descripton.

Also, I did not advocate using DD (as your second comment seems to indicate). Tduffy1770 IMO had already addressed DD (and cautions) so I saw no need to reiterate the same. Like it or not DD is a viable option (for some) and therefore deserves to be mentioned.

For the record I've probably missed some other options such as "mycheckfree.com" mentioned by davewest4. I didn't know the service it existed. But then that's the purpose of this forum...to fill in the gaps...because no one person can know everything.

I have said it in other posts here. Quicken wants to be in contro! Don't let it!!
It will want to store your user ID and password for each acount. User ID OK not password. At least I trust it with ID.
It will want to auto track/download all your acounts in real time mode. Do not let it. I go to my acounts individually and download.
I also do not buy the latest greatest newest Quicken. They have the program wired to advertise by telling you you need the newest year several times toward the end of the current year.

It helps to watch what time span the bank displays before hitting the submit. The larger banks will eft most bills the smaller banks probbally do not electronically connect wih very many.
If you slip and are under the time slot for billpay to pay go to that customer and do a direct withdrawal. A one time only. If a local account like a doctor or some othr type that dose not charge interest or late fees, carry the check in or wait for the next bill or just bill pay it anyway.

I have used "mycheckfree.com" for several years with no problems. I do not use my banks online bill pay feature as they just write out checks and mail them same as I would do

Most of my bills including all utilities are paid electronically.

Cynthia,
I have business and personal accounts in several banks. I am amazed at how widely they differ in making online bill paying the proper choice. Some are easy; some are just impossible. I've found a great bank with a great web presence, and use that for all of the household bills and many of the business bills. I think the way to go is to find a bank you can live with, and use their service.

If your bank doesn't offer excellent service in this regard, talk to another bank.

That said, some individual business entities provide means of paying your bills to them that may be even easier than using the bank. However, for consistency, for record-keeping, and for peace of mind, the easiest thing to do is to use a good bank.

Bo F.