It has come to our attention that there can be serious drawbacks to online bill payment systems. While they can be a tremendous time and postage saver, one must be very careful when using them. When entering amounts to be paid, type carefully. Make sure you include the decimal point. If the system you use gives you an opportunity to review your payments before finalizing the transaction, do so.
One frequent contributor to this blog, who shall remain nameless, recently found this out the hard way, when he checked his account online to verify the deposit of his paycheck only to find his checking account was overdrawn. Quick investigation revealed that instead of scheduling a payment to the phone company for $57.54, he'd sent them one for $5754.00. The money is still somewhere out in cyberspace. The bank and the clearing house can't stop the payment, and it won't arrive in the phone company's account for several more days.
What's more, the phone company is not accustomed to customers overpaying their bills, and therefore have no policy or procedure for dealing with this. In fact, had the contributor not brought it to their attention, they would have simply applied the entire amount to my account, ensuring that my--I mean the contributor's phone service would be paid up for the next eleven years.
Fortunately the contributor was able to throw himself on the mercy of the bank and at least got the two overdraft fees that had already been levied reversed. And fortunately he was able to scrape together enough cash from other sources to cover the rest of the outstanding bills (including the check for the mortgage payment) until he can get his money back from the phone company. He hopes.
ALL RIGHT, I ADMIT IT!!! IT'S ME!!! I'M A MORON EXTRAORDINAIRE!!!!!!
Ironically, I'm rather opposed to just setting it up so my creditors can just take money out of my account to pay my bills every month. Had I actually done this I never would have had this problem.
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3 comments:
There, but for the grace of God, go I. It's so easy to do, especially if you're starting to need reading glasses over top of contacts to work on the computer. I'm amazed and relieved that I haven't done something like that (yet). Thanks for the reminder to actually read the amount carefully before confirming the transfer! I hope you're able to get everything straightened out without too much trauma.
I may be able to look into this if you want. Give me a call.
Thanks, "entalf," but I've already been working with your customer service people. They've been very good, and my refund request is currently working its way up the chain. With any luck this will be all sorted out within the week.
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