@longtimelurker wrote:
@FinStar wrote:Your advice will definitely help newbies for sure. While the system can experience issues at any point (server down, inoperable features) I always perform several tests for all accounts to make sure everything works ahead of time, especially from a remittance perspective. I've never set any autopay on any of my ~60 CCs and never missed any payments for as long as I've had accounts. Then again, I tend to micromanage my accounts so this avoids the issue.
OK, very different from me! I set autopay (in full) on all my accounts.
The only time I was late with a payment was pre doing this, in the era we mailed checks in (checks were special pieces of paper, which you put in another special piece of paper called an envelope, and then attached yet another special piece of paper called a stamp, and then put the whole thing in a special box. And a person would come and collect it from the box, and eventually another person would deliver it to the bank. Yes, hard to believe, but ask your parents or grandparents about it....)
My issue with people not trusting auto-pay is that when you electronically pay from your bank account, you are trusting a very similar system, so most of the potential issues are there still. Unless you want to hand-deliver the cash, you are trusting electronic systems (and even then, if you actually want the money credited to your account....)
You bring up some good points my road warrior buddy 
Actually, it's not so much the mistrust, I think it's a good feature it just never worked for me with the number of CCs I had and how I established my payment methods.
In the beginning most auto pay features were very squirrely/inflexible (and sometimes unrealiable) for some banks. So, those methods proved not as prudent with the way I had things organized. And, since I'm on the OCD side (no surprise to anyone) I actually have a redundant system with most of the major banks that I have relationships with so if one has technical issues or glitches, then I can rely on another one (or another one). But for payments, mine are done way ahead of time (just a personal preference) thus giving the extra timeframe cushion should an issue arise either due to any misposting issues or encoding/ACH errors.
I'm a do it myself bill payer too. I am not a big fan of autopay but as a safety net, I guess that's ok. I have noticed some folks just set things on auto pay and never look at their bill again. I like looking at my bills, analyzing my spending and re-evaluating what I'm paying for as time goes on. I'm more aware of where my money is going and can correct something I may be doing wrong, or catch something going wrong more quickly.
I would never trust auto-pay to pay my bills. 
@n0smirc wrote:I'm a do it myself bill payer too. I am not a big fan of autopay but as a safety net, I guess that's ok. I have noticed some folks just set things on auto pay and never look at their bill again. I like looking at my bills, analyzing my spending and re-evaluating what I'm paying for as time goes on. I'm more aware of where my money is going and can correct something I may be doing wrong, or catch something going wrong more quickly.
I would never trust auto-pay to pay my bills.
I understand, merely dont find it worthwhile! I think the chance of auto-pay failing is very very small (and about the same as your manual payment failing) so time spent doing it manually has a very low ROI. Looking and checking bills is almost orthogonal, i.e. I would expect you will find checkers in both the manual pay and auto-pay populations, and similarly those who don't look and just pay the amount due are represented in both.
But it sounds like a number of people get some pleasure from tracking etc these things, so that's a good reason
@longtimelurker wrote:
@n0smirc wrote:I'm a do it myself bill payer too. I am not a big fan of autopay but as a safety net, I guess that's ok. I have noticed some folks just set things on auto pay and never look at their bill again. I like looking at my bills, analyzing my spending and re-evaluating what I'm paying for as time goes on. I'm more aware of where my money is going and can correct something I may be doing wrong, or catch something going wrong more quickly.
I would never trust auto-pay to pay my bills.
I understand, merely dont find it worthwhile! I think the chance of auto-pay failing is very very small (and about the same as your manual payment failing) so time spent doing it manually has a very low ROI. Looking and checking bills is almost orthogonal, i.e. I would expect you will find checkers in both the manual pay and auto-pay populations, and similarly those who don't look and just pay the amount due are represented in both.
But it sounds like a number of people get some pleasure from tracking etc these things, so that's a good reason
Right. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
What I mainly do not like about these auto pay is that you cannot set your own payment date. I hate to pay the last second on the due date and would set all my bills to auto pay if I could select 1 week prior to the due date 
....I would like to have a manual pay safety net in case it does not kick in...but how the systems are set up it would be too late in case it does not work.
@longtimelurker wrote:
@FinStar wrote:Your advice will definitely help newbies for sure. While the system can experience issues at any point (server down, inoperable features) I always perform several tests for all accounts to make sure everything works ahead of time, especially from a remittance perspective. I've never set any autopay on any of my ~60 CCs and never missed any payments for as long as I've had accounts. Then again, I tend to micromanage my accounts so this avoids the issue.
OK, very different from me! I set autopay (in full) on all my accounts.
The only time I was late with a payment was pre doing this, in the era we mailed checks in (checks were special pieces of paper, which you put in another special piece of paper called an envelope, and then attached yet another special piece of paper called a stamp, and then put the whole thing in a special box. And a person would come and collect it from the box, and eventually another person would deliver it to the bank. Yes, hard to believe, but ask your parents or grandparents about it....)
My issue with people not trusting auto-pay is that when you electronically pay from your bank account, you are trusting a very similar system, so most of the potential issues are there still. Unless you want to hand-deliver the cash, you are trusting electronic systems (and even then, if you actually want the money credited to your account....)
Love your analogy!!
