My BAD experience using Bill Pay to pay my CC balances.

[TaperRandy]

This is post I hope will serve as a head’s up to all those who intend on paying off a credit card or 4, using bill pay. 

Just because a financial institution offering electronic bill pay, says that CC payment(s)will be delivered the following day, even showing them on the screen as such, does not make it so! Beware.

Using TDBank’s bill pay on 7/2, I put forth 4 payments from an alternate checking account totaling $23,000+. 2 of the payments were due on the 3rd. One due today, another, tomorrow. Assured by TDBank that this method would be sufficient and expeditited, I believed them. Big mistake. 5 days after implementing this method, no merchants received a single dollar. Fortunately, never having missed or been late on a single payment in my entire credit career, saved the day. I was afforded grace periods where there typically are none to be had. 

Here’s the deal: TDBank decided that all payments made on the 2nd, were going to be in the form of hard check, snail mail, to each of my CC companies. Without notifying me first, they elected to go this route because, and I quote “Your payments were of very large and untypical amounts, sir. We issued them in check form, to protect you in case you ...wait for it...”changed your mind”. This is no exaggeration. Yes, I blew a gasket. and shifted into “stop payment” mode. TD rep snarkily said I would incur fees for that decision. Ultimately after a “supervisor” reviewed my history, the stop payment fees were waived. I proceeded to call all the merchants from my couch, and provided this external checking account’s info, and all payments were immediately posted. 

I was lucky to have caught this ridiculous move by TD, and avoided any penalties. When I pressured the TD rep to answer as to why they decided to arbitrarily treat my cold cash payments like a balance transfers, I received gibberish double talk. Ultimately, it became apparent what the real deal is: hard copy snail mail ensures 5-8 more days of interest to the host bank. Times that by a million people a day...and it is crystal clear to the customer that it is a “maximized profit” mentality, rather than delivering funds electronically and appeasing the customer.

Lesson learned in this household. Link bank accounts DIRECTLY to all CC.

Take care all. I hope this sheds some light on just on if only one...deceptive bank practice. 

[iced]

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@TaperRandy wrote:

This is post I hope will serve as a head’s up to all those who intend on paying off a credit card or 4, using bill pay. 

Just because a financial institution offering electronic bill pay, says that CC payment(s)will be delivered the following day, even showing them on the screen as such, does not make it so! Beware.

Using TDBank’s bill pay on 7/2, I put forth 4 payments from an alternate checking account totaling $23,000+. 2 of the payments were due on the 3rd. One due today, another, tomorrow. Assured by TDBank that this method would be sufficient and expeditited, I believed them. Big mistake. 5 days after implementing this method, no merchants received a single dollar. Fortunately, never having missed or been late on a single payment in my entire credit career, saved the day. I was afforded grace periods where there typically are none to be had. 

Here’s the deal: TDBank decided that all payments made on the 2nd, were going to be in the form of hard check, snail mail, to each of my CC companies. Without notifying me first, they elected to go this route because, and I quote “Your payments were of very large and untypical amounts, sir. We issued them in check form, to protect you in case you ...wait for it...”changed your mind”. This is no exaggeration. Yes, I blew a gasket. and shifted into “stop payment” mode. TD rep snarkily said I would incur fees for that decision. Ultimately after a “supervisor” reviewed my history, the stop payment fees were waived. I proceeded to call all the merchants from my couch, and provided this external checking account’s info, and all payments were immediately posted. 

I was lucky to have caught this ridiculous move by TD, and avoided any penalties. When I pressured the TD rep to answer as to why they decided to arbitrarily treat my cold cash payments like a balance transfers, I received gibberish double talk. Ultimately, it became apparent what the real deal is: hard copy snail mail ensures 5-8 more days of interest to the host bank. Times that by a million people a day...and it is crystal clear to the customer that it is a “maximized profit” mentality, rather than delivering funds electronically and appeasing the customer.

Lesson learned in this household. Link bank accounts DIRECTLY to all CC.

Take care all. I hope this sheds some light on just on if only one...deceptive bank practice. 

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I don't think I follow - what's the deceptive practice they did here? Cutting a bill pay by check? A quick Google search reveals they can and do cut paper checks in some circumstances. Just one example is here:

https://www.tdbank.com/tdhelps/default.aspx/how-does-bill-pay-work/v/40601730/

I really want to feel for you, but you used a service you had never used before and decided to wait until a day before your bills were due to use it, on a week with bank holidays no less. You learned to dive by first trying a Triple Lindy, failed, and pointed the finger at them for it, blowing a gasket in the process, then doing what sounds like berating them to explain themselves before you, then was ultimately the real victim because they had the audacity to not bow and beg for forgiveness and do exactly what you wanted to them to do be "snarky" and call them out on the Interwebs for the obvious bad bank they are.

Indeed, lesson learned. ACH is a more reliable way to go, I agree. I also think this experience is one where I would say step back, take several deep breaths, look it over again in a few weeks once the emotion has passed, and assess if this was really so egregious a problem.

[DaveInAZ]

Yes, I prefer to link bank accounts on the CC website and have them pull the payment, primary because the CC company will credit your payment on the date you specify to pull the payment, regardless of when they actually receive the funds. For example I like to pay on Fridays and they usually don't debit my bank account until Monday or even Tuesday, but the payment is credited on Friday. But I also don't cut it so close, I schedule the payment when I retrieve my monthly PDF statement and schedule it at least a couple days before the due date so in case of any problems I can still make a payment another way before the due date. The one exception is Bank of America CCs, because if you don't have a BoA bank account they make it a royal pain to add an external payment account.

With interest rates so low I doubt the reason TD wanted to send paper checks was to hold onto your funds for a couple more days, Canadian banks just seem to be more conservative and cautious than American banks, TD=Toronto Dominion. A couple years ago I decided to give BMO Harris Bank a try. The first time I tried to use Bill Pay they wanted to mail a paper check, at least they warned me so I canceled the payment. I called and asked and the rep said that "for security" the first payment for any new payee is always sent by check. BMO=Bank of Montreal. It was a short try, I closed my BMO accounts and moved on. 

[TaperRandy]

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@DaveInAZ wrote:

Yes, I prefer to link bank accounts on the CC website and have them pull the payment, primary because the CC company will credit your payment on the date you specify to pull the payment, regardless of when they actually receive the funds. For example I like to pay on Fridays and they usually don't debit my bank account until Monday or even Tuesday, but the payment is credited on Friday. But I also don't cut it so close, I schedule the payment when I retrieve my monthly PDF statement and schedule it at least a couple days before the due date so in case of any problems I can still make a payment another way before the due date. The one exception is Bank of America CCs, because if you don't have a BoA bank account they make it a royal pain to add an external payment account.

With interest rates so low I doubt the reason TD wanted to send paper checks was to hold onto your funds for a couple more days, Canadian banks just seem to be more conservative and cautious than American banks, TD=Toronto Dominion. A couple years ago I decided to give BMO Harris Bank a try. The first time I tried to use Bill Pay they wanted to mail a paper check, at least they warned me so I canceled the payment. I called and asked and the rep said that "for security" the first payment for any new payee is always sent by check. BMO=Bank of Montreal. It was a short try, I closed my BMO accounts and moved on. 

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Thank you for your input. It did all make sense. However, I would have no original post content if the rep hadn’t assured me beforehand, that all payments would be delivered to the merchants the following day. Apparently they were either mistaken, or another department called an audible...without notifying me first. That’s pretty much it. I can only go by what they say, originally. Unfortunately, the outcome is not always ideal. Thanks though for replying...constructively.

[OmarR]

OP,

If you have always used TDBank's billpay in the past (for smaller payments) and they didn't specify that it would be a manual check for a larger amount, than I too would be irritated by this.

I always PIF, with one payment mid-cycle and another pay-off payment several days before statement end. This puts me way ahead of any due dates. It also puts me ahead of any mishaps that I couldn't or didn't expect.

Also, I am in the minority, but I don't enter my debit card/checking account info into ANYONE'S database, whether it be pizzahut.com or mycreditcard.com. No one is 100% hackproof. Autopay does save a lot of people, but autopay and pull payments are not for me. To each their own.

[UncleB]

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[Anonymous]

I use bill pay for my Synchrony accounts but I use pull payments on all my major bank accounts. 

The thing is that most banks will tell you in their bill pay terms and conditions you agree to when you sign up for the service that they are only responsible for a 5-day turnaround and may deliver checks as well. I actually ran into a similar problem with my bank because NFCU doesn't accept electronic bill pay. A check went in the mail and NFCU held it for a week before they cashed it. I called and they told me that my payment would still be posted to my account per the date on the check but fortunately it posted two days before it would have been late so I never had to deal with that. After that, I have just decided to keep my Synchrony accounts on push and pull everything else. 

[Anonymous]

I never used the Bill Pay feature of a bank/brokerage, it always seemed like such a pointless feature to me.  Why don't people just mail the check themselves?

[UncleB]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I never used the Bill Pay feature of a bank/brokerage, it always seemed like such a pointless feature to me.  Why don't people just mail the check themselves?

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There are several reasons I prefer using bill pay.  It's cheaper (stamps cost 55¢ now) and usually faster, with electronic delivery taking place in only a day or two.

Not all bill pay platforms are created equal, though.  My bank (USAA) uses CheckFree as their underlying provider, which tends to work well for me.  The only creditor I have that they pay via paper check is BBVA, but the issue seems to be on BBVA's side (WF's in-house bill pay service pays BBVA via paper check as well.)

I also tend to prefer my bank's bill pay over paying from the creditor's site for most lenders since I can enter all my payments at once, and there's no chance of having a 'bounced' transaction due to a miskeyed account number.  That's just my own subjective preference, though.