Tell me about automatic payments

Dh and I have done up to eight automatic payments a month. The upsides to us are:

-No checks/postage/envelopes. Hence it's cheaper in both time and money.
-easy to set up through the bank and most of them the bank does electronically, making it far, far less likely that a post-office error error will cause a late payment. It lets us send our payments on time instead of early "just in case"
-fabulous third party "paper" trail. No more of the whole "but I *swear* I sent in on the tenth and you guys just didn't open the enveloped for two weeks so you could charge me a late fee!" They are less likely to question my bank records than to call me a liar.

Downsides:

-Our bank is constantly finding creative ways to make it *very* easy for us to screw up and make mistakes. That way they can charge us fees to fix the error. Foir example: you can change a payment five days before it's sent out. Five business days. You can change payments on weekends, but not if teh five business days begin the day after the weekend ends. The five days are counted excluded the day the payment is sent out and the day the payment is changed. So now we're up to potentially eleven days before a payment is sent out when it cannot be changed in any way. More if there's a holiday in the interim. And then there's another five business days before it's actually sent. Nearly a month!

Some banks (BankOne) are much more cooperative about this (my MIL uses them and finds thier bill pay really excellent). In fact we'd swithc banks except the service at our branch is so good.

With the incredibly long lead time required to change payments it's really only practical to us to make recurring payments through the bank. We usually pay the maximum the bill is likely to be and let ourselves get a bit ahead.

I prefer to pay through a third party--the bank--rather than allowign direct access to the person I'm paying. The exception is utility companies (gas and electric). They are so highly regulated that it would be difficult for them to do anything out of line. They also vary so tremendously that we find direct payment much easier than trying to get the bank's bill pay to work for this.

I wouldn't do this for a phone company if there was any kind of long-distance service involved. There are simply too many variables to not keep on top of that myself. Too many widespread scams throughout the years as well.

We have SunRocket and pay annually though, and love it.

I personally wouldn't pay a conventional phone company at all if I had a choice about it, and indeed I don't. I tell you, that one $200 payment in December was one the best $200 bucks I've spent.

We love our automatic payments. The only check we have to write every month is for the rent. Everything else is automatic debit. We occassionally write checks for additional payments on loans but that is it.

Our bank charges for automatic transactions set up through them so we go around that rule by setting things up with the individual companies. All the set amount bills get deducted directly from the bank, all the variable bills (utilities) are charged directly to the credit card. Then we pay the credit card off every month in full with an automatic payment.

It certainly doesn't hurt to speak to someone at your bank to clarify their policies and see how it could work for you.

My mortgage company just ended up losing interest on our home equity loan because it wouldn't allow for electronic payment and paying over the phone with a debit/credit card cost $7. As soon as it was low enough we paid it off with a 0% balance transfer offer from one of our credit cards (we're working on making that singular, although I do like the flexibility of being able to juggle interest rates a bit). The annoying thing is the regular mortgage payment was very easy to set up as an automatic withdrawal.

All of our bills are automatic or one-click. Haven't had a problem yet in 2 years (knock on wood). We check our checking account once a week or so to track what bills have and have not yet been paid. Our credit union's electronic payment thing actually coordinates with the eletronic payment thingy of a couple of our service providers, like our insurance.

The bills tend to be about the same amount each month so we don't bother with paper bills, if the bill seems higher or lower than usual, I'll go online and check it out. (Lesson learned this month? Change your air filters. )

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Us too. Our credit union offers free online bill pay, and I LOVE it. I can still do it "manually", payments are not sent out until I authorize them (but you can opt to have them automatic - I just like to have that control).

Oue only automatic withdrawls are:
Car, home, life insurance (we get a discount for EFT)
DH's IRA
DS's 529

Everything else, I have written in a planner/calendar every month and check them off as I pay them. The way ours works is if it's a company that accepts EFT, you need to input it 3-5 business days before it is due; If the company does not accept EFTs, they cut a check and mail it out (and we do NOT pay for postage) and you need to input it about 7-10 business days prior. As son as I get a bill, it goes in the planner in that month, then when I use the bill pay, I write the date and confirmation number on the bill and file it. I've been doing it for over a year now, and it has been working out great, we've never had a problem with a payment.

I trust our credit union, the insurance company (we've been with for over 10 years now) and the investment co. to have our info, but I havne't given it to anyone else, though some of the other companies we have offer auto withdrawls...so I'm a teensy bit paranoid, but not a ton.

Personally, I would never do auto payments through a bank/third party. Too many fees and delays. I would much rather do payments online directly to the vendor (e.g. pay Verizon.com the Verizon bill). I still avoid all the mailing hassles and it's fast and predictable and I have the control. Many vendors also have the automatic payment option too anyway, without the fees. There is not even one monthly bill that I have to mail anymore.