Don't Trust Bank Bill Pay for CC's

[Anonymous]

That is my point.  BoA claims it was paid on time/timely and that the delay must be a "crediting error" on side of CapOne.

I have asked CapOne to investigate and determine date they received payment and posted.

Message Edited by txjohn on 04-04-2009 11:29 AM

[Anonymous]

A bank bill-pay to a major CCC should be electronic, and my bank sends those out early in the day, meaning the recipient will defintely receive it in time to post that same day. At the very worst, BOA could have transmitted it late in the day and CapOne might have given it a 10/2 posting date. There is no excuse for a 10/3 posting date. One of the two banks is definitely at fault. The only deviation from a selected bill-pay target date might occur if a paper check needed to be mailed, such as if the recipient is a local utility, a small private business, etc., where they aren't set up for electronic transfers, and you are subject to postal delays.

I agree with concorduser in that usually the safest thing to do is try to schedule payment well before the due date, track when your bank posts the payment and when the recipient posts the payment, and contact someone immediately if a payment doesn't post at either end when scheduled ... 

Message Edited by Revike on 04-04-2009 11:50 AM

[CreditAble]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Oh, the convenience is great.  I just don't trust it without all the "follow up" you mentioned.

As stated, I generally do PIF early.

 It was an AF that hit that I wasn't aware of. 

I am not saying it is BoA's fault, I am saying it is my responsibility and as such, I choose to have the CC enrolled in auto draft from the CC side in case snail mail is late/lost, bank bill pay is late or errored, I am hit by a bus and in a coma or abducted by aliens, etc.

It's called covering my posterior back side and mitigating risks.

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Did the bank fail to post the AF on your statement?

How was it that you weren't aware of the AF?

Are you saying that you don't feel the need to check all of your accounts at least monthly because you rely on the auto pays to work flawlessly?

I agree that when an auto pay fails to post on time I would be upset. I also know that Muphy's Law guarantees that something will always go wrong sooner or later.

Personally paying attention to every detail all the time is my first line of defense. Automatic payments for me would only be for back up. If I were to be abducted by aliens and could not check my bills to make sure the are paid ontime,  I would then have to trust my auto pay as I would have no other choice in the matter.

Actually I would still ask the aliens if they had an internet connection and would it be alright for me to check my bank and CC acounts before they start experimenting on me?

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[Anonymous]

For some reason many have assumed I was upset/angry at the banks.  This is incorrect, I was upset with myself for allowing a preventable bad - my bad.

My statement was, as has been very well chimed by others:  Don't trust bill pay, something could go wrong.

For the record, I had checked my statement before cut, it had zero balance.  The AF was evidently charged at the end of statement.  I assumed (bad thing to do) that I did not have a balance.

My Bill Pay was set to pay a set amount (more than minimum if maxed), meaning once the payment posted (1 day after due in this instance) I had a credit balance.

So, everybody.....this is not about me being mad or placing blame with anyone other than myself.  It is an affirmation of my new commitment that I will not rely solely on the bill pay (won't trust my good credit to its functions), I have enrolled in the CC auto draft (which provides protection against lates - if they fail to post or draft timely I am not penalized or responsible) AND I will never let a statement cut that I don't look at even if I believe there is nothing due.

My OP was a statement, not of anger, but of resolve not to ever have this happen again

There I even put a smiley face on there so I don't seem mad

[MattH]

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@CreditAble wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Oh, the convenience is great.  I just don't trust it without all the "follow up" you mentioned.

As stated, I generally do PIF early.

 It was an AF that hit that I wasn't aware of. 

I am not saying it is BoA's fault, I am saying it is my responsibility and as such, I choose to have the CC enrolled in auto draft from the CC side in case snail mail is late/lost, bank bill pay is late or errored, I am hit by a bus and in a coma or abducted by aliens, etc.

It's called covering my posterior back side and mitigating risks.

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Did the bank fail to post the AF on your statement?

How was it that you weren't aware of the AF?

Are you saying that you don't feel the need to check all of your accounts at least monthly because you rely on the auto pays to work flawlessly?

I agree that when an auto pay fails to post on time I would be upset. I also know that Muphy's Law guarantees that something will always go wrong sooner or later.

Personally paying attention to every detail all the time is my first line of defense. Automatic payments for me would only be for back up. If I were to be abducted by aliens and could not check my bills to make sure the are paid ontime,  I would then have to trust my auto pay as I would have no other choice in the matter.

Actually I would still ask the aliens if they had an internet connection and would it be alright for me to check my bank and CC acounts before they start experimenting on me?

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I check every account (and my credit history through a monitoring service that allows unlimited pulls) every weekend. Thus far every credit card company has credited my account exactly when Bank of America said the payment would be made, but I still believe in closing the loop.  Also should one of my accounts ever be hit by fraud I would want to know that ASAP.

Back in the days of paper checks I used to phone the credit card company about a week after mailing the check to verify they had received the payment; several times over the years a check got lost or delayed in the mail and I was able to avoid a late fee by using pay-by-phone to electronically pay the minimum.  I think in one case the check arrived a few days late and in a couple other cases it vanished never to be seen again.  And in one case a few months later I found a check I thought I had mailed under the seat of my car!

So I always close the loop.

Edited to add: ALSO, once I got a check back with a form letter saying "you forgot to sign this check, please sign it and send it to us again..."

Message Edited by MattH on 04-04-2009 05:53 PM

[haulingthescoreup]

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txjohn wrote:

...So, everybody.....this is not about me being mad or placing blame with anyone other than myself.  It is an affirmation of my new commitment that I will not rely solely on the bill pay (won't trust my good credit to its functions), I have enrolled in the CC auto draft (which provides protection against lates - if they fail to post or draft timely I am not penalized or responsible) AND I will never let a statement cut that I don't look at even if I believe there is nothing due.

My OP was a statement, not of anger, but of resolve not to ever have this happen again

There I even put a smiley face on there so I don't seem mad

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lol, no good deed goes unpunished!

Thank you for posting your experience. There are an awful lot of people who live and die by Bill Pay, and until it bites them in the butt, or they read about someone who got bitten, they don't realize that this can happen.

[Creditaddict]

Bill pay with your bank like Bank of America will START the payment process on the day you set but it takes time either electronically (usually 2-3 days) or check and mail (usually 5 days) for that payment to reach your payee.

It sounds like it worked perfectly the way it was suppose to.

I think you were thinking that if you go to a creditor site like Capital One and schedule a payment for say the 1st, it will post on the 1st for that payment, but even the actual bank site is just giving you credit that day that you paid it but it takes them a couple days to retrieve that money from your checking account.

When you schedule a payment on your bill pay it should tell you how many days it should take to process. 

[Anonymous]

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@Creditaddict wrote:

Bill pay with your bank like Bank of America will START the payment process on the day you set but it takes time either electronically (usually 2-3 days) or check and mail (usually 5 days) for that payment to reach your payee.

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That hasn't been my experience with my bank. When a company is added to the bill-pay list, it is designated whether a payment to that company will be electronic or not. For those companies that are designated as electronic (like all the major CCCs), it does not take 2-3 days beyond the payment date I set. For example, if I logged on with my bank today and set up payments for 4/8 to Chase, Citi, and BOA, those amounts will be posted to my bank account on 4/8, and when I log into Chase, Citi, and BOA on the evening of 4/8, I will see my payments credited ...

Message Edited by Revike on 04-04-2009 05:54 PM

[Watchmann]

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That hasn't been my experience with my bank. When a company is added to the bill-pay list, it is designated whether a payment to that company will be electronic or not. For those companies that are designated as electronic (like all the major CCCs), it does not take 2-3 days beyond the payment date I set. For example, if I logged on with my bank today and set up payments for 4/8 to Chase, Citi, and BOA, those amounts will be posted to my bank account on 4/8, and when I log into Chase, Citi, and BOA on the evening of 4/8, I will see my payments credited ...

Message Edited by Revike on 04-04-2009 05:54 PM

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Instant crediting does not happen for me.  When I have my CU pay a bill electronically there is about a two day lag before it shows up on the receiving end.  I think this all depends on what kind of service and timing each institution uses.  Perhaps in your case they are tied in with the same payment service, whereas my CU may be tied in with another type of bill payer.  Makes no difference to me, I've only had one bill pay go awry in 10 years of using it.  I will pay AT LEAST a week before it is due, and have an alert set up on the receiving end to tell me the payment has been posted.  I will also manually check to make sure it is posted.  Electronic bill pay is not a set and forget it feature, it still takes monitoring.  All it does is free you from writing paper checks.

[MattH]

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@Creditaddict wrote:

Bill pay with your bank like Bank of America will START the payment process on the day you set but it takes time either electronically (usually 2-3 days) or check and mail (usually 5 days) for that payment to reach your payee.

It sounds like it worked perfectly the way it was suppose to.

I think you were thinking that if you go to a creditor site like Capital One and schedule a payment for say the 1st, it will post on the 1st for that payment, but even the actual bank site is just giving you credit that day that you paid it but it takes them a couple days to retrieve that money from your checking account.

When you schedule a payment on your bill pay it should tell you how many days it should take to process. 

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The fundamental difference between initiating an electronic payment from the creditor side (what I think of as "pulling" the money) versus initiating an electronic payment from the checking account side (what I think of as "pushing" the money) is that if I set up a "pull" from the creditor side their computers know about it before the transfer even takes place and in most cases will give immediate credit.  With a "push" transaction the creditor's computer only knows about it when the transfer takes place.  Think about what happened in the old days with a paper check: the creditor would immediately credit your account with them when they got the check, but the money would not be debited from your checking account until the paper check physically reached your bank; this was known as "float."  Some big companies even paid their East Coast employees with checks drawn on West Coast banks and vice versa in order to maximize their float.