topic Re: Trust Autopay? in General Credit Topics

Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:11:57 GMT

I decided to restructure how I pay my credit cards in keeping with my "use it like a debit card" ways... This restructure should help maximize earnings, but depends on credit card autopays and I've never used them, had them setup just-incase, but never actually let it hit before.

Little background: TL;DR at bottom.
Decided, why not earn a tiny (insignificant!) amount of interest on my payments? I also figured this will help me keep a better tab on what I actually have, and technically never "owe". Since Discover allows you to have any number of savings accounts, I created and labeled one for each credit card (since their rate is higher than Ally for now). Any time I make a purchase, at the end of the day total everything up and use google pay to transfer from my main checking, to Discover checking, then distribute per-card to their respective savings accounts. This ensures all purchases are accounted for, and already budgeted from the main account. During float time, it should earn interest (2.10% as of writing).

This also guarantees that the payments are already set aside. When the statement rolls, I transfer just the statement amount (leaving any pending) to my Ally checking (via google pay again, which should earn another 1% as a 'purchase'). Then the statement amount sits in my ally account earning another measly (as of writing) 0.10% during the grace period. This does, however, again guarantees all cards are covered. I setup the Ally checking account as the autopay for all said credit cards and they pull their respective payments from the "statement pool" of cash.

TL;DR starts here:
So my question to you, is do any of you trust the credit card auto-pay system? Specifically I'm asking (as of right now) about US Bank, Discover, and Synchrony/Paypal. Discover and US Bank I can manually set the day and set it to 2 days prior to the due date for safety, Synchrony does not allow this, so I'm a little jittery about it.

Please share your experiences with autopay for US Bank, Discover, and Synchrony (specifically Cashback MC). "Trust" a credit card company... heh.

Edit: Removed a bunch of  ... Why do those get stuffed in randomly?

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:10:15 GMT

Every single credit card, student loan, and auto loan I own is on auto pay. I don't trust myself not to forget and either way, each credit card is going to get paid.

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:14:13 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Every single credit card, student loan, and auto loan I own is on auto pay. I don't trust myself not to forget and either way, each credit card is going to get paid.

Guess if they have the system it has to work else they'd get major complaints. I'm a hawk on my finances so it's not like I'll forget. I'm just a bit skittish when it comes to depending on automated systems.

Re: Trust Autopay?

blindambition — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:29:56 GMT

I don’t do Auto Pay. I had a nightmare scenario once. Luckily it didn’t cause me a credit issue. I just set myself notifications when to pay. This works for me. With that said; I know many use AutoPay with no issue.

Your scenario has too many working pieces where something can go wrong. That’s just my opinion. Not against the AutoPay, but might want to simplify that setup.

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:42:56 GMT

@blindambition wrote:
I don’t do Auto Pay. I had a nightmare scenario once. Luckily it didn’t cause me a credit issue. I just set myself notifications when to pay. This works for me. With that said; I know many use AutoPay with no issue.
Your scenario has too many working pieces where something can go wrong. That’s just my opinion. Not against the AutoPay, but might want to simplify that setup.

It's not as complex as it sounds. Verses my current setup where I push payments weekly, I instead transfer the payments to a dedicated savings account to gain a touch of interest before the autopay hits I could simply set a reminder and do the payments manually, but that adds extra steps. What would you suggest to simplify it?

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:45:51 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Every single credit card, student loan, and auto loan I own is on auto pay. I don't trust myself not to forget and either way, each credit card is going to get paid.
Guess if they have the system it has to work else they'd get major complaints. I'm a hawk on my finances so it's not like I'll forget. I'm just a bit skittish when it comes to depending on automated systems.

+1 I don't trust auto pay enough to rely on it. I choose to pay manually and do it ahead of the due date. I utilize a calendar as a reminder. Manually paying my bills forces me to look at my statements and be on-top of everything with the finances should I need to catch something off.

I've seen where auto pay has failed and caused more issues with failing, double-pulling and not paying from the correct payment account. I'd rather own my accountability to the finances. The only thing I do use auto pay with is auto insurance, which we pay in full every 6 months. My bills are simple and don't require a lot of micro-management. I can see where auto pay is useful to those with a lot of accounts and little time to manage.

Re: Trust Autopay?

Remedios — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:51:14 GMT

I almost missed a payment because I forgot about quarterly recurring charge

Since then, all my cards are set to pay minimum payment on due date as a precautionary measure, but they get paid before.

I did not "trust" autopay prior to this *almost incident* and I thought it could never happen to me.

Re: Trust Autopay?

blindambition — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:59:29 GMT

Hasselfree hit the nail on the head. I’ve seen double pulls, and pulling from wrong account. I wouldn’t use multiple accounts to pull from. Too many variables not in your favor with that setup.

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 17:09:40 GMT

Hm, people seem to be confused a little with stating pull from multiple accounts. All the shuffling is done by me. Only ONE account is setup as the autopay account. All my cards have just the one account listed on them and I'll be self directing cash into said account to monitor. The multi-account play is all managed by me manually. I will probably pay things manually from said account, just wondering if autopay is a good safetynet. The account is already setup with billpay to push payments to all the cards. Not going to entirely depend on autopay.

Re: Trust Autopay?

calyx — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 17:36:41 GMT

Trust but verify:

I have auto payments set up on all of my accounts, but I stay on top of them when I'm first starting out with a bank.
I like that most of them will let me do a statement balance well before the due date, except for synchrony which only allows me to do autopay on the due date, which makes me a wee bit nervous.

I get paid once/month, so I have recently gotten in the habit of just paying everything when my payday hits, but have the autopay set up still (just in case). My only snafu has been USBank, which will pull my autopay payment even though I've already paid the balance off. So I have a weird alternating thing with them where I push, they autopull in month 1, I do nothing month 2 (since the negative is already there - it's a recurring charge), and then in month three I forget all over again and we loop to the overpayment.

I can't think of a single (regular) bill that I don't have on autopay.

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 17:47:51 GMT

Always verify, always. Thank you for mentioning the US Bank thing, I have it set up to autopay 2 days before the due date, but I think I've heard of them still taking despite you manually paying the balance. I think Citi as well? I'll have to keep an eye on them. Synchrony is the one I trust the least, and it only doing the due date does bother me. Least Discover has high class customer support if something goes wrong vs foreign. US Bank, several branches I can visit and resolve at if required.

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 18:22:30 GMT

Unlike most here (apparently) I use auto-pay almost exclusively, for PIF on due date. In my opinion, providing there is money in the bank account, any issues becomes the issuer's responsibility, they agreed to withdraw the full amount on the due date. If instead you are pushing, and something goes wrong so the payment doesn't arrive on time (or for the correct amount) the issuer is going to assume it is your fault.

When setting it up, I always do a manual pull before the due date to make sure the bank account etc has been correctly entered. And check if you wish as often as you feel the need. But the system works! Of course, always check your online statements anyway.

Now some have had problems doing a partial payment after statement cut but before due date. Some issuers will withdraw the full statement balance which could cause you to be overdrawn. So don't mix the systems! (AFAIK though, all issuers work correctly if you PIF, then the autopay gets cancelled).

My only late fee/payment came from when I thought I had set up autopay on an account and I hadn't.

Some use autopay for min payment as a precaution against being late. Setting it to PIF also prevents interest charges so that is my approach.

Re: Trust Autopay?

outofcredit — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 23:51:00 GMT

My autopay experiences involve Synchrony accounts which will pull the payments early if your due date falls on a Saturday or Sunday. The payment is pulled the prior Friday. Bank of America will pull regardless of whether you have already made a minimum or not. If you have a balance, they will still pull a minimum payment on top of whatever you've already paid. Chase won't pull an autopay if you've already made a manual payment to them. Just this month, BOA did their autopay, but, because my "due date" was on the 4th ( Sunday) they started the pull on the 4th but the payment didn't actually post to the account until the 5th. Hoping that doesn't end up being a problem. I would love to put everything on autopay but I'm to paranoid to trust it.

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 03:08:08 GMT

I don’t trust anything I don’t do myself. Too many things can go wrong. I have an app that I list all of my credit accounts and their due dates in and I manually pay them every month then mark them paid. Plus auto pay with some companies is obnoxious — Capital One for example will take the minimum payment even if you made a payment if you still have a balance on the card and BBVA doesn’t update the amount due in their app so you have to dig through the ledger to find the payment. I trust myself more than banks and machines.

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 11:10:53 GMT

Finding some good replies, but I feel like I opened a Pink Floyd debate... "Mother, should I trust the government?"

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 11:16:02 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Finding some good replies, but I feel like I opened a Pink Floyd debate... "Mother, should I trust the government?"

It’s really all about how much hands on work you want to do. Some will argue that you can miss a payment if you forget about some recurring charge but I take 10 minutes to check every single account on the 3rd of each month (not to mention my OCD makes me check many other times throughout the month) so even if I did forget about something, I would never be late making a payment.

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 11:30:03 GMT

I'm pretty hands on with it, it isn't a problem to just pay them myself. Just testing out things.

Re: Trust Autopay?

calyx — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 12:35:13 GMT

Yeah, I'm pretty hands on, even though I don't want to be.

It's just so much easier to pay all the current balances the day after the money hits my account (monthly salaried pay), transfer all of the overage to my savings accounts and wash my hands of it til payday the next month. My Sync is due the 1st and I'm paid at the end of the month (25/26/27 depending on what day of the week payday falls), so I don't have to worry about "forgetting" the Sync coming out of my checking (0% 48month financing deal, it's the same amount every month).

I pay 'current' rather than 'statement' balances, so I also don't stress utilization, either - it's rarely over 30% on any given card by the time it reports. I have an AU card and I have no control on the utilization on that thing, which has occasionally nailed my aggregate %. That lack of control has let me take my hands off the wheel on even bother stressing utilization on my cards. So once a month payment of current balance it is.

Re: Trust Autopay?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 13:17:24 GMT

@Anonymouswill attest that for me US Bank has not pulled on 'auto pay' when I have paid it. Only speaking for my situation (seven years).

Re: Trust Autopay?

Remedios — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 13:37:27 GMT

I haven't had US Bank pull either after the account is PIF, regardless of auto pay.