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Only One Nightmare in Nearly Five YearsAug 19 '00 Write an essay on this topic.I have been using online bill payment through my bank since January 1996. Only the passage of a law outlawing it would cause me to go back to the analog method of satisfying me creditors. Least I or anyone else forget, this is not a perfect world, however. I’ll relate my online bill payment nightmare shortly. How I Use It I’m a Microsoft money User. A sucker for upgrades, I’m currently on my fourth version of the software. My bank, Centura, supports online money management and online bill payment. They charge eight bucks a month for both services but you can get a discount if you elect to have your paycheck directly deposited into your account and if you make your withdrawals through an automated teller machine. The combination of online money management and online bill payment is great. I am able to download a bank statement five days a week. Since I use a debit card for most of my monetary transactions this really helps me keep a handle on my account balance. Online bill payment is also a Godsend. I don’t have to keep track of envelopes or buy stamps. For reoccurring bills, it is necessary to enter the payee’s address only once. I can also schedule those reoccurring bills to be paid automatically every month. Additionally the bank guarantees that all payments will be made by the scheduled date or they will pay any additional interest or late charges. They will also contact the organization that was paid late to let them know that the problem was with the bank and not with you. My One and Only Nightmare Last summer I got a call from the power company’s automatic information system that informed me that my electricity would be disconnected in seven days because they hadn’t received payment. I called the bank and they assured me that they had mailed the payment several days ago. I called the power company and explained the situation and was granted an additional seven days since in 17 years as a customer I’d never had a late payment before. I wasn’t really bothered by all of this. I figured it was an anomaly. It had never happened before. The following month, I got another call form the power company. Now I was incensed. I called the bank and once again I was assured that the payment had been mailed on time. I told the CSR that I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. She agreed to stop payment on the first check and to Fed Ex a cashier’s check to the power company. The following week my daughter called me when she got home from school to tell me that we had no power. I called the power company to report the outage and they told me my service had been disconnected due to non-payment. I called the bank in a fury. I was assured that the payment had been overnighted the previous week. They had a tracking number and the name of the person who signed for it. At this point I told the bank to call the power company to get this straightened out. I also let them know in no uncertain terms that I wanted my power back on immediately. A few minutes later, I got a sheepish call from my bank. The CSR told me that the power company wasn’t being cooperative and that I would have to go down and pay the bill in person in order to get my power restored. I rushed to the bank and to the power company with only minutes to spare. Additionally, since the bill had originally been paid with a cashier’s check, I was out $600 instead of the $300 amount of the actual bill. It took nearly a week and countless phone calls before all of this got straightened out. The power company never did acknowledge receipt of the original Fed Ex payment. The bank finally credited my account $300 and went off on their own to fight with the power company. So Why Do I Still Like It I believe that the problem had more to do with the arrogance of the monopolistic power company than with the online bill payment system. Since that nightmare ended, I’ve not had a single additional problem. I’ve used online bill payment to pay all sorts of bills, from the newspaper and record clubs to the phone company and my mortgage holder. I can pay bills in the nude on Sunday morning or at midnight. The convenience and the computer assisted bookkeeping are the only way for this consumer to go.  |
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