Trust Autopay?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[outofcredit]

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.

[Anonymous]

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. 

[Anonymous]

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

[Anonymous]

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

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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. 

[Anonymous]

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

[calyx]

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.

[Anonymous]

@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).

[Remedios]

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