Auto-PIF Function

[Anonymous]

My Bill pay at my CU pulls the CC bills in auto-

I do PUSH my payments to the creditors- I do have the option to auto-pay  and I do this with companies the CU can't pull bills from- Auto loan and mortgage-

They send me and email, I reconcile the statement in MS Money and set the payment date and $ amount.

With savings, 10K CC and 50K HELOC - I really don't need to worry about bouncing anything-

I gave up on AUTO EFT's FROM my checking several years ago when USwest pulled 18K for my cell phone bill.  

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

So I got sick and tired of sitting down and typing in my credit card statement balance.....

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No offense, but it takes me 10 seconds to log into any one of my card's online accounts and about 30 seconds to make a payment....the process takes about a minute, maybe a few seconds more total.

You will find yourself getting even more "sick and tired" checking the sites all the time to make sure your payments were payed or not....at least you should do this unless you could care less about a late.

So.....60 seconds of being "sick and tired" or spending just as much time (most likely MORE) checking to see if a payment was made...and extra worry...and a possible late if you don't check.

Hmmmmm.......

[MsKiwi]

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Timothy wrote:

I gave up on AUTO EFT's FROM my checking several years ago when USwest pulled 18K for my cell phone bill.  

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<-------------- Faints

[Anonymous]

Well, it's not like every time I have a payment due someone on the other end is physically typing in the amount to be debited from my checking account. The system reads the amount due and then debits THAT amount from the account.

Once it's set-up to do this, it's not like someone will go in and change a decimal point or something to have 10x the amount deducted from my account just to make my life more difficult.

Also, it's unlikely that someone who has everything go smoothely in terms of setting-up and auto-PIF will take the time to find a forum such as this and post about their success in setting-up an auto-PIF. It is also unlikely that someone who is already on the forum will post regarding a success. It is FAR more likely that someone whose auto-PIF got goofed up gets on and complains about how poorly they work.

I feel like these screw-ups are less the rule and more the exception. And, once everything works out for me (Assuming it does), I will be sure to post to let you know how everything turned out, especially if it turned out well.

[CodeMonkey]

Well - you don't actually know this. And whether or not someone is entering the number manually, or a software program that someone wrote is doing it (and being a programmer myself I am always leery of automated systems, knowing what I know about the average code quality of most application developers - spaghetti!) - there is a human element involved. Humans make mistakes. Mistakes when you're dealing with your primary cache of liquid assets are very, very, very, very bad.

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@Anonymous wrote:

Well, it's not like every time I have a payment due someone on the other end is physically typing in the amount to be debited from my checking account. The system reads the amount due and then debits THAT amount from the account.

>

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[Anonymous]

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CodeMonkey wrote:
Well - you don't actually know this. And whether or not someone is entering the number manually, or a software program that someone wrote is doing it (and being a programmer myself I am always leery of automated systems, knowing what I know about the average code quality of most application developers - spaghetti!) - there is a human element involved....

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Well, fancy you should mention this. I used to work for a student loan company in the loan servicing department and one of my jobs was to take the ACH forms submitted by people along with their loan packet and enter their information into the system.

I would type in their bank information and it would deduct the proper payment each month. Out of the thousands of forms I processed (About 50-100 each day , I goofed up probably 1 out of every 1000 forms.

Eventually we developed an automated system where customers would go online and enter the information themselves, at which point it became THEIR responsibility to enter their correct account information.

ANYWAY. The moral of the story is that you only hear complaints about this sort of stuff when something goes wrong, so for every 1 person who complained about it, there are probably 999 people out there who didn't have an issues with it.

[CodeMonkey]

Sure - why risk being that 1 person in 1,000 they "goof up"?

Especially considering the ROI you're talking about here, time-wise - you're going to have to verify payment is posted anyhow (unless you don't mind lates), so why not just take the extra 10-30 seconds when you do that and post the payment manually?

Guess I'm just not seeing the return being worth the risk, but to each their own.

[Anonymous]

Haha, come on now. This is the myFICO forums! Irrationality is the norm.

My goal is to streamline and automate my finances. I transferred all of my accounts to my credit union, automated my IRA and 401(k) contributions, set my credit card payment due dates on the same day of the month, set-up direct deposit into my accounts, etc.

Basically, if want to not have to worry about paying my bills. For the first couple of months I'll make sure everything is gravy. I'll probably even call in and verify that the system is set-up to PIF (I'm 100% sure a computer automatically deducts the statement balance from the account. I highly doubt a person would manually enter in the statement balance each month. I'm sure AmEx and Discover are smart enough to get some software to automatically do it for them).

After that, I'll feel free to check my statements to verify my payments whenever. I already have lots of things on my mind to remember. A year from now, I could completely forget to check any of my bank accounts and everything would take care of itself. How nice would that be!?

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

....After that, I'll feel free to check my statements to verify my payments whenever. I already have lots of things on my mind to remember. A year from now, I could completely forget to check any of my bank accounts and everything would take care of itself. How nice would that be!?

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Pretty darn nice! And in a year, I might find (pick one) Harrison Ford/ Denzel Washington/ Kevin Costner/ George Clooney knocking at my door, looking for a new friend. Or Paul Newman, if he's still alive by then.

Despite how it sounds, I'm not telling you not to do this; you're a big boy. But since these are forums, and read by many, many people, many of whom have marginal or downright crooked CCC's and banks, I croak my "Nevermore" at this idea, for anyone else who might be reading.

[MsKiwi]

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jaybird201 wrote:

Haha, come on now. This is the myFICO forums! Irrationality is the norm.

My goal is to streamline and automate my finances. I transferred all of my accounts to my credit union, automated my IRA and 401(k) contributions, set my credit card payment due dates on the same day of the month, set-up direct deposit into my accounts, etc.

Basically, if want to not have to worry about paying my bills. For the first couple of months I'll make sure everything is gravy. I'll probably even call in and verify that the system is set-up to PIF (I'm 100% sure a computer automatically deducts the statement balance from the account. I highly doubt a person would manually enter in the statement balance each month. I'm sure AmEx and Discover are smart enough to get some software to automatically do it for them).

After that, I'll feel free to check my statements to verify my payments whenever. I already have lots of things on my mind to remember. A year from now, I could completely forget to check any of my bank accounts and everything would take care of itself. How nice would that be!?

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If it works out for you, that'll be great. I'm not about to try my luck. I just don't trust that if the system failed I'd be given the benefit of the doubt by whichever lender didn't get paid due to a system failure.