BofA apparently doesn't want my money

[haulingthescoreup]

I think so much of the BillPay pros and cons depends on the competence and reliability of your bank. I'm reasonably sure that USAA handles this well, although I've read horror stories about BillPay from those at other banks.

I don't use it for two reasons: The first is that my only baddies are lates, and I still sometimes wake up in a cold sweat, thinking that I've missed a payment. If I made that payment myself, I know it's done. The second is that with ADHD, it's very difficult for me to put something on auto-pilot and expect everything to go off without a hitch. I have to be doing it myself to know that it happens, because otherwise, things go into limbo in my head in seconds.

I guess a smart thing for me to do, since I usually PIF and do so early, would be to set up BillPay as a safety net. If it's able to check the creditor and just pay whatever is due at that point, I could set it up to do so 3 days before my personal deadline. I haven't sat down and figured out if that's possible though. If it has to have a set payment amount, though, it wouldn't work for me at all.

[Anonymous]

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cheddar wrote:

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scapegrace13 wrote:

Cheddar, when I looked at the myeasypayment pages just now, they had BofA logos all over the place and NO mention of any third-party company.

Is there any chance this IS BofA's 'pull-thru' option, completely in-house....?  Don't the third-party options always make it clear they're third party?

Or am I being dense (I've never knowingly used those sites, though I'm thinking now that my first payment WAS through a Bill Pay transaction and I just didn't realize at the time that was the case), and just the fact that it's called myeasypayment.com is the third-party tip-off...?

Edited to add:

P.S.:  I avoid BillPay type things for all the same reasons Cheddar stated; I just don't trust the service not to have a glitch or be slow or heaven-knows-what when it really matters!

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Hmm...now that's interesting.  Perhaps this is their in-house system after all.

I'll have to look into it.  I still wonder why it's easier to make an online payment with Orchard than it is with BofA.

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Looks like this is EXACTLY what I was looking for.  As far as I can tell, this seems to BofA's in-house system.

Thank you, scapegrace!

[Scamp]

cheddar wrote:

Hmm...now that's interesting.  Perhaps this is their in-house system after all.

I'll have to look into it.  I still wonder why it's easier to make an online payment with Orchard than it is with BofA.

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Looks like this is EXACTLY what I was looking for.  As far as I can tell, this seems to BofA's in-house system.

Thank you, scapegrace!

You're most welcome! Glad I could help.   And glad to know, myself, that this IS in-house! lol.  So your question helped ME, too, by forcing me to look more closely at it!

[Anonymous]

.....................I still wonder why it's easier to make an online payment with Orchard than it is with BofA.

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Now that's a hoot!

[Anonymous]

Aren't most modern billpay/ebill systems a hybrid of push/pull and ACH/paper?

For example, from my BOA checking I can, depending on the payee:

1. Pull electronic statements from the payee. Have payments sent electronically, typically with same day or next day delivery via ACH. I can do this for bills from American Express, BOA itself, AT&T, Citibank, Comcast, GEICO, PG&E.

I can, and do, set up auto-payment rules for all of these, like: "If bill is under $200, just pay it automatically, 10 days before it is due. If over, send me email and ask me to take action."

2. Send paper checks. I do this for my housing.

3. Oddballs who can send email bills to me, but don't seem to be able to send electronic bills to BOA directly. My auto lease is like this for some stupid reason, as is my housing insurance.

My fast preference is for #1, cause I can autopilot the whole thing.

Don't mean to threadjack, just curious how others do it.

[Anonymous]

Very interesting thread everybody.

What is ACH?

[Anonymous]

Maybe I'm not understanding this either, but for my BoA card, I use my Chase checking to pay. Under the bill pay section at BoA, if you click on Payment Accounts, it will let you add an outside checking. I would say all of my accounts are set up this way.

[Anonymous]

I think you have to wait for a statement and then you can select pay now under total miniumum amount due. I have 3 outside accounts linked to BofA, but they were set up a while ago, not sure if this has changed.

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Maybe I'm not understanding this either, but for my BoA card, I use my Chase checking to pay. Under the bill pay section at BoA, if you click on Payment Accounts, it will let you add an outside checking. I would say all of my accounts are set up this way.

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That's what I do on mine as well, but with BofA, this option is not available until the first statement posts.

So if you're determined to pay it down some before it reports the first balance to the CRA's, you have to get creative!

[Anonymous]

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@haulingthescoreup wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Maybe I'm not understanding this either, but for my BoA card, I use my Chase checking to pay. Under the bill pay section at BoA, if you click on Payment Accounts, it will let you add an outside checking. I would say all of my accounts are set up this way.

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That's what I do on mine as well, but with BofA, this option is not available until the first statement posts.

So if you're determined to pay it down some before it reports the first balance to the CRA's, you have to get creative!

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Duh, I think I mailed in my first payment. It's been awhile...