Well, Autopay just screwed me

[Anonymous]

Last month I set up autopay as a fall back option in case of emergency. The only reason I would need autopay is if I were in the hospital or something, because I check my credit score and credit cards' balances religiously.

A few days ago I submitted my payment thinking everything was great. I had 1 of my three cards reporting a balance, and that balance was less than 9% of both that card's CL and my total CL.

Well, the autopayment went through too.

So, I am sitting here with a negative account balance on 1 card. My Experian account just emailed me a Credit Score Drop notification.

On my EX account, it shows 0% utilization across each of my cards.

My score dropped 20 points because of this.

So, if anyone was wondering, that is how much your score can drop by not showing at least 1 card with a revolving balance I went from 639 to 619 overnight.

That wipes out my last 3 months of progress...I hate this "game" sometimes -_-

Edit: Apparently people are thinking that I am not aware of what autopay means, or that I am trying to assert that I am not at fault or something. All I am doing is sharing my experience. Setting up Autopay screwed me, and I have taken autopay off now because it screwed me out of 20 points when I thought it would help. So, in my experience, autopay did not help as I thought it would, it actually hurt me. Thus, think hard about setting up autopay if you are in a similar situation.

[medicgrrl]

Your score will rebound when your next statement cuts with a balance. Autopay is going to pay every month. That's what autopay is...an automatic monthly payment.

[Anonymous]

We have to take personal responsibility when we set up things like Auto Pay...you didn't go in for whatever reason and stop it, this has happened to me and I get checks back from my CCs for overpayment because I forgot to turn it off..no biggie..but then again I look in the mirror and just say "yeppers..i forgot"

[Anonymous]

It appears people are misunderstanding my point.

I know what Autopayment is. I don't need condescending posts. I suppose I was unaware that autopay would pay an already paid amount. I set my autopay to pay the current balance on a certain day. So, I was surprised when the balance due at the time of the autopay was $0 and the autopayment was the previous balance before I made my manual payment. Honestly, as a web developer, that doesn't make sense to code the autopayment that way, but I know what the developer did (or what the lender told the developer to do).

In addition, I am not saying I'm not responsible. I know I set up autopay. I have already taken the steps to terminate autopay because it isn't intended for emergency situations as I was going to use it.

So, to be explicitly clear (because it appears I need to be): The point of my post is that Autopay decreased my score by 20 points. If you are like me and set up autopay as an emergency situation, then stop your autopay because even if you pay your bill manually then autopay will still pay the very same bill you already paid, even if you tell the autopay to pay the current balance (which at the time mine went through, the balance was $0). If that happens, this could result in a negative account balance. If a negative account balance occurs, it could be very damaging to your credit score.

I'm not mad at the credit company, Experian, or anyone else. I am merely stating that to be careful of autopay, learn from my mistake as I took a 20 point hit by setting up autopay.

That's all.

Thank you.

[Gunnar419]

I'm curious. What did you expect autopay to do? Autopay pays automatically every month or at whatever specific interval you set it up, and it sounds as if it did exactly what you set it up to do.

As others have said, this is a temporary setback. Even if it weren't, it doesn't sound like autopay screwed you, but as if you didn't understand what autopay was designed to do. Or am I misunderstanding the situation?

ETA: I posted this just as you posted your explanation. I still don't quite understand how what happened was autopay's fault, but I didn't mean to be condescending.

[medicgrrl]

Autopay is a good thing to have set up. If it's set up to pay the minimum payment then just make sure you pay the balance-minimum payment-the amount you want to report. Example if the balance is $200, the minimum payment is $25 and you want $10 to report... the payment you would make outside of autopay is $165.

[Anonymous]

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@Gunnar419 wrote:

I'm curious. What did you expect autopay to do? Autopay pays automatically every month or at whatever specific interval you set it up, and it sounds as if it did exactly what you set it up to do.

As others have said, this is a temporary setback. Even if it weren't, it doesn't sound like autopay screwed you, but as if you didn't understand what autopay was designed to do. Or am I misunderstanding the situation?

ETA: I posted this just as you posted your explanation. I still don't quite understand how what happened was autopay's fault, but I didn't mean to be condescending.

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1. I expected autopay to pay the balance on the day that I set up autopay to pay that balance. If the balance was $100 on that day, then I expected autopay to pay the balance I instructed it to pay.

2. I didn't say it was autopay's fault. I said the results of me setting up autopay negatively impacted my score. Setting up autopay screwed me in the way of a 20 point credit score drop. I thought it would pay the total balance on the date that I instructed it to. On that day, the balance was $0, but autopay paid $115, which resulted in a negative account balance. So, instead of autopay "paying" $0, it paid the previous balance of $115. Setting this up screwed me out of 20 points. Thus, I have terminated autopay because I don't want to damage my credit score again.

I no longer wish to participate in this discussion though because I fear that people will read it and think that autopay is bad. That is the last thing that I want to have happen.

I shared my experience as a data point and provided context, and now it appears the conversation is trending in a direction that I feel is non-beneficial to the community as a whole.

[Anonymous]

I don't think anyone was being condescending at all.

Sure maybe you can say they missed the point of your post, but when the Subject reads,"Well, Autopay just screwed me..." of course thats what someone would naturally focus on.

Anyways, just move on. Sorry it happened but its only temporary. Lesson learned. And frankly if my score were to take a hit do to my balance, I'd rather it be a negative balance than maxed out.  

[rmduhon]

That sucks OP. Hearing things like this is why I decided not to set up autopay, although I was worried about it causing an overdraft to my bank. Thankfully it'll bounce back when one of your cards reports a balance.

[Anonymous]

If you setup Autopay, it generally works in one of two ways:

1. what I call 'basic' autopay - does what it says on the label.  If you tell it to pay you statement balance, it pays the statement balance.  If you tell it to pay the minimum payment, it pays the minimum payment.  And it doesn't take into account any payments you have made yourself during the cycle.  Useful, but not as useful as...

2. 'Intelligent' autopay - with an intelligent system, It looks at your balance at the time the payment is due and reacts accordingly.  If you tell it to pay the minimum payment, and there is no minimum payment because you have already paid, then there is no payment.  If you tell it to pay the balance, it pays the balance at the close of the statement, leaving you with a zero balance every time.

(Some banks offer a third 'fixed payment' option - this allows you to choose a certain amount and have that dropped into your account every month - I consider that to be pretty basic as well, because again it will do so regardless of other payment activity.)

Unfortunately, the version you get is 100% dependent on the financial institution you are working with, and the only way to know ahead of time is usually to search these or similar forums for previous user experiences.  Equally unfortunately, the basic version costs the bank fewer IT dollars to implement, so that's what the vast majority of them have.

Just so we have the datapoint, OP - what bank had the basic system you had the displeasure of finding out about the hard way?