Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Online Bill Payment

Oh my goodness. Techno-phobe Extraordinaire (that'd be me, by the way) just signed up for online banking and paid a bill online for the first time ever. I got off the computer all shaky and nervous and flustered. But I did it. I bet I can do it again. Especially with the price of stamps these days. Oh, and the price of paper checks too.

7 comments:

  1. Online bill pay is the only way I get any business done. :)

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  2. LOTS of people tell me that! It still scares me. But my son-in-law and the lady at the bank have both impressed upon me that there's far less fraud and theft accomplished against/through online banking than with actual checks. Between that and the cost of stamps, I finally decided that I could give it a whirl. Setting up automatic bill payment, though, is going to have to wait a few more months before I can even begiiiiin to consider it.

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  3. We've paid most of our bills on-line for the last 3 years and have had no problems. I still use paper checks for grocery shopping. There are 3 large chains that either hand you back the check or pre-authorize the check. I've had my identity and account information stolen 2 times in the last 6 months. Once with the pre-authorization guys and one time with the hand you back your check store. I'm almost ready to use cash for all store purchases.

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  4. I do a lot of on-line payments as well. Thankfully, I have had no problems. The nice thing about on-line banking is that you can watch your account carefully rather than just looking at the once a month statement. If there were any questionable charges you could find them much quicker. I only have 2 bills yet that I mail. One of them (our satellite) we may cut off soon anyway and the other I'm thinking about adding to our online payments also.

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  5. You're gonna love it once you're used to it! I check our checking account and VISA accounts a lot more often than once a month now. It helps to find those errors sooner rather than later... And you'll like not spending 42 cents every time...

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  6. Holy cow... If I didn't have online bill pay, I would forget to pay so many bills. I know that sounds terrible - but it's true!

    That said, I know that my dad has a very safe way of paying for things online that I can't remember at the moment, but you could e-mail my mom about it. He runs some program (from the credit card people) that creates a random, one-time use credit card number that is tied to his credit card account. After it gets used, the number "poof" goes away, and it basically eliminates any risk of fraud or someone getting your credit card number through a worm or something.

    Pretty nifty stuff, if you ask me.

    Oh, and welcome to the future. ;-)

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  7. Susan,

    We have used automatic debits for years now. It has saved me lots of headaches trying to get different bills paid on time. It's also easier for me to keep my checkbook balanced because I can look at what has cleared my checking account every day if I need to. I love it. And we've never had any trouble with identity theft or late charges. It's made life so much easier for me!

    Congratulations for overcoming the fear!

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