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Have you been bitten by auto-bill pay?
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This morning I came across a piece in the New York Times in which columnist Ron Lieber published a mea culpa for his previous, breathless automated bill payment fandom.
After writing about the greatness of paying your bills on autopilot, Lieber received a bunch of reader mail citing the problems with this sort of Web-driven modern convenience, which he distilled into five points:
- There can be billing (and as a result, payment) errors
- Auto-withdrawals don't always stop when you cancel the service
- Your auto-pay credit cards eventually expire
- You're exposing your bank or credit card information to others
- You might become complacent
I'm a believer in auto-pay-type services, but I stick to the credit card based auto-payments, and never hand over my bank account info or my debit card for automatic payment.
When payments come from my credit card, I have an opportunity to check out the statement before I pay my credit card bill. I've challenged incorrect charges to my credit card in the past, so I'm comfortable with that route.
As for point three, about the expiring credit cards, I've always looked on that as a sort of defense against forgotten online services for which I may not have knowingly accepted the automatic payment option. I like the idea that the credit information I've shared with vendors off in the online doesn't last forever.
What's your comfort level around automatic bill pay services? Do you turn to your bank for this, or use an online service like Intuit's Paytrust?
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