On 6/4/2011 11:56 AM, Josh wrote:
On Sat, 04 Jun 2011 11:36:04 -0400,
wrote:

I just added Emory Hospital as an automatic payee. Wells Fargo has no
caller ID lookup so the chances of finding the address, city, state
automatically is 0. (I suggest adding this feature every time it
comes up but all I hear are crickets)

Also automatic payments has no way to send the exact amount of the
bill. I can set up payments, and I have the option of sending them
forever until I stop them, or sending xx number of payments. South
Trust had the option of "send until you pay $$$.cc."

Because all of my bills recur monthly, I rarely have to add payees so
the amount of trouble to switch banks is more trouble than to put up
with this, so all I can do is complain.

M. I. C. K. E. Y. M. O. U. S. E bank

This is why I've always used the "pull" method of automatic payment
(where you authorize the utility/school/credit card/etc to initiate an
ACH transfer each month for the bill amount), instead of the "push"
method of these bill-pay systems. I'd see if the hospital can set
that up if these are ongoing bills.

I've done this for all my recurring bills for 15+ years and never had
a problem with a bad withdrawal -- on the contrary, the one time I
tried to use "bill pay" several years ago with my credit union to pay
the rent I couldn't have autopayed via pull, on the third month they
took the money out of my account...and never sent it to the rental
agency. They did take responsibility, and refunded it along with the
late charge I paid the agency immediately, but I gave up after that.
Too much room for error/finger pointing, where with ACH withdrawal, if
the statement says "PG&E ACH $16.85", that's proof that PG&E received
that amount.

In the end, if the company pulling the money is legit, they're only
going to take what they should. If they're not...well, anyone with
your account and routing number (including someone you "bill pay" to)
can initiate a fraudulent payment anyway, so you don't really have any
more protection.

Josh

I trust you have told your bank to NOT link that account to your other
accounts, so if a fubar'd or fraudulent transaction comes through, it
can't snatch ALL your money? Don't laugh- it has happened- bank tries to
be helpful, and ends up aiding a crook.

I am glad it works for you, but the only way I would trust letting
outsiders tap my account on their own, is via a sacrificial account in a
separate bank, and never keep more in the account than I can afford to
lose. Rationally I know you are correct, and it works 99.999% of the
time with no problem. But I seem to be a lightning rod for that 0.001%.
Besides, writing those checks reminds me it is real money, and I need to
be frugal so I don't outlive it. Automatic payment is worse than using
plastic- it doesn't FEEL like spending money at all.

And unless you have your account set up for pull payments, how can
anyone remotely tap it? Isn't that a flag on the account? And don't the
pull payment orders have to be from specific banks/accounts/IDs?, with
the vendor presenting YOUR bank with an image of one of your checks and
some sort of an authorization audit trail, at least the first time? That
is what all the vendors I deal with imply, in their incessant pleas to
get me to start using auto-pay.

Yeah, I'm a luddite- I'd rather use cash for everything. But that isn't
really possible any more, no matter what the law says.

--
aem sends...