Which online bill payment service..

As a banker with Wells Fargo, I (of course) use Wells Fargo's online bill payment service. For employees, it's free. For customers, it's free for the first 2 months, then it's $6.95 each month thereafter (unless you have $5,000+ on deposit, then it's completely free!). For your $6.95, it includes up to 25 bill payments per month (more than plenty for me) and $.40 for each payment after 25.

I LOVE IT AND I ALWAYS RECOMMEND USING A BILL PAYMENT SERVICE!!! The best thing about it, is that it take the money out of your account the very next day, so you don't have to wait to write your check, mail it off, wait for them to get it, deposit it, and hopefully you still have the money left in your account to pay it! Bill Pay makes it so much easier.

I would recommend using the online service that your bank offers. Most banks offer bill pay with their online banking, so just find out how much it costs. It's worth it!!!

 

Thanks for the info.

 

I am very pleased with HomeLink from Fleet. Free with a minimum balance of 10,000 which can be outstanding loans (auto, home eq.) and chk, sav and other types of accts, 4.50/mo if below 10k.

www.creditsense.com

 

NanaC,

You may be interested in www.mycheckfree.com & see if this service would benefit you; I have used them for going on 2 yrs & most of what I pay is FREE of charge.

My credit union uses them & I just went "around" the fee.

Sister Girl

 

Nana,

I've been using CheckFree also for about six months. No complaints.

 

Nana- depends on your bank -maybe they offer a good enough service.

Many of the bank online services are good (I also use Fleet Homelink and like it).

If you're looking for a service that goes a little further - something that also includes bill presentment (they grab your statement online and put them all together for you) or total bill management (you change your billing address to a PO box and they either grab electronically and present, or scan and present) -- there are 2 choices.

Checkfree runs one service - it's marketed as Yahoo Bill Pay, among others. You'll know it's Checkfree if they have a long list of merchants who offer "E-Bill" service.

I use that one for some of my bills - $4.95/month for 20 - but they only cover about 8-10 of them (all the GE/Monogram accounts, Bank of America, local electric company, Ford, and Macys (this is the only "electronic" way to pay my Macy's Visa - Macy's web site only lets you pay the store account).

Paytrust - offered as "American Express Bill Center" among others - is my "main" service. They offer "smartbill" which covers Amex, Chase, Bank of America, Macys (store only, not Visa), Providian, NextCard, Citi, CapitalOne, and Fleet. They get the statement data from the website, and give you one "inbox" for all your bills. They will also scan paper statements sent to your address - a PO box in Sioux Falls, SD. Using the service this way means no paper bills, everything electronic.

WARNING -- when you change your billing address to the PO box, you will have problems buying things online if the merchant will only send stuff to the billing address. Some CC companies (Amex) allow multiple addresses to be on file

Both services link to your bank account and (for most bills) send an EFT to the merchant. They all post within a few days (2-4) of the date sent.

Why do I use both? I travel a lot and like to pay bills while on the road. I had too many problems with using the PO box, and between both services, nearly every bill is now delivered and paid electronically. The only exceptions are Target, FNANB, and Sears - but they all have web sites as well. The advantage of these services (over and above individual web sites) is that I don't want to have to go to 10-12 web sites to pay bills.

For more info-

http://www.paytrust.com
http://bills.yahoo.com

Hope that helps-
mj

 

Nana - Yahoo offers a funds transfer service under their Finance area - it's by CashEdge.

It takes a few days to initially set-up, but once you've verified everything, it's great. It takes 3 days to move money from A to B, but it's free (and even if you used mail, you'd have holds on the deposits ... so this is the fastest way to do it).

The maximums are $2000 per month and $1000 per transfer (I think).

http://finance.yahoo.com/fundstransfer

-mj

 

I use the bill payment from chase.com. It is very efficient, I can set up reoccurring payments. I can draft the money from my checking account, USAA, and pay any bill I please.

They have a list of pre-addressed companies with accurate information. If you can not find your payee, then you are given the option to manually insert the address. I pay all of my bills, to include the electric and phone bill this way. If you think about it, it saves you a stamp and an envelope each month.

Also, they send notification of when the payment was made each month to my email. So I know who was paid on which day.

Last but not least, you are able to run different types of reports, similiar to Microsoft Money, so that you can see where you money is going.

I highly recommend this service. From one fellow El Pasoan to another.

 

Nana- that's what drove me to these two services.

Keep in mind - almost every bank offers bill-payment, but that's only 1/2 of it - sounds like you want bill presentment too.

I would seriously check-out the checkfree (Yahoo) and Paytrust services (since you're an Amex cardholder, the Paytrust deal marketed as "American Express Bill Center" is the best one - $10.95/month for 20 transactions). You can get the Amex deal from Amex's website.

Let me go a little further on my experiences-

Paytrust has been a DREAM as far as customer service - they have live humans you can talk to, or you can work with them via email. They are extremely responsive, and have never taken more than 1 business to get back to me (usually it's a few hours).

Checkfree has been a little less wonderful - they do NOT have phone support - only messaging fron the website. I've had a few problems go on for over 14 days, with lots of emails back and forth.

Best of luck-
mj

 

I use BofA Online Banking. It offers bill payment as well as presentment. I haven't gone with presentment yet because a few of the eBill (as BofA calls them) capable merchants I use will cancel the mailings of my paper statements if I choose to sign up for their eBilling. I take exception to this because sometimes, you just need the real statement for proof. (My employer has setup the new HR system so that by default, if you have direct deposit, you will not get a paystub. If you want one, you can log into a secured part of our global intranet and print out a copy. Try using that as proof for a mortgage company).

BofA is similar to others mentioned. They have a master list of payees like Amex, Discover, AT&T long distance and wireless etc. with their verified payment addresses. Many of the pre-listed payees are paid electronically. If you want, you can add most anyone EXCEPT the IRS and child support payments to your personal list. Those payees are then contacted with your first payment and asked if they want future payments to be a check or electronic transfer.

An interesting feature about adding a payee to your profile. If your payee is a Visa or Mastercard, the first thing you do is select Visa or Mastercard--not the bank. Now there are some exceptions like BofA credit cards, Citibank credit cards, Macy's Visa, Nordstrom Visa, Pentagon FCU Visa/MasterCard etc. The key thing with these issuers is that they all can do eBilling/electronic statement presentment to BofA.
But if you have any other Visa/MC and you enter the billing information, BofA knows which bank actually issued your card based on the account number. In most all cases, Visa/MC payments are sent electronically.

Payments are done pretty fast. If I schedule a payment for Household Bank or Macy's on Tuesday before cutoff time, the money is taken out of my account overnight, transmitted the next day and usually my HHB card or Macy's accounts will post the payment on Wednesday. Most of the other electronic payees post/receive the payment on Thursday or even Friday for the latest ones.

I have had a couple of instances where a payment denied getting the payment on time. But they quickly changed their tune when contacted by my 600 lb gorilla, namely, BofA Online Banking customer service. Gee, when I called I was told there was no way for them to credit a late fee yada yada yada. So I sent a message via online mail to customer service. The next day I got a response--we contacted the merchant and verified payment, they will credit your account with any late fees, excess interest and also update their files to show you never paid late. Hoooo Yaaaaa!!!