OT Wells Fargo's online banking sucks

[Metspitzer]

I just added Emory Hospital as an automatic payee. Wells Fargo has no caller ID lookup so the chances of finding the address, city, state automatically is 0. (I suggest adding this feature every time it comes up but all I hear are crickets)

Also automatic payments has no way to send the exact amount of the bill. I can set up payments, and I have the option of sending them forever until I stop them, or sending xx number of payments. South Trust had the option of "send until you pay $$$.cc."

Because all of my bills recur monthly, I rarely have to add payees so the amount of trouble to switch banks is more trouble than to put up with this, so all I can do is complain.

M. I. C. K. E. Y. M. O. U. S. E bank

-- O'Neil to General Hammond: For the record Sir, I wanted to blow it the hell up.

[JimT]

Most, if not all, big banks suck and exist to please share holders. Get a credit union. I've been with a CU for almost 30 years. Not one problem. In fact, they are very helpful particularly when it comes to ID theft. Small enough to treat you like a person.

Jim

[Josh]

This is why I've always used the "pull" method of automatic payment (where you authorize the utility/school/credit card/etc to initiate an ACH transfer each month for the bill amount), instead of the "push" method of these bill-pay systems. I'd see if the hospital can set that up if these are ongoing bills.

I've done this for all my recurring bills for 15+ years and never had a problem with a bad withdrawal -- on the contrary, the one time I tried to use "bill pay" several years ago with my credit union to pay the rent I couldn't have autopayed via pull, on the third month they took the money out of my account...and never sent it to the rental agency. They did take responsibility, and refunded it along with the late charge I paid the agency immediately, but I gave up after that. Too much room for error/finger pointing, where with ACH withdrawal, if the statement says "PG&E ACH $16.85", that's proof that PG&E received that amount.

In the end, if the company pulling the money is legit, they're only going to take what they should. If they're not...well, anyone with your account and routing number (including someone you "bill pay" to) can initiate a fraudulent payment anyway, so you don't really have any more protection.

Josh

[George]

I would never ever give anyone the keys to my bank account. All disbursements are made by me and I can think of a number of occasions why that makes sense.

We use natural gas for heating/cooking/water heating. The highest bill we ever had was ~ 160.00 There was bad weather so they didn't read the meters and delivered estimated billing. Only little problem was they delivered a bill for almost $700. If they could take whatever money they wanted they would have caused other payments to fail since I only keep sufficient money to pay bills in the account. Since I am in control of my checkbook I called them and asked how much I really owed them and they played the part of the 900lb gorilla and told me $690. I refused to pay unless they gave me a reasonable estimate so the "supervisor" had a powwow with someone and decided $150 would work.

The water company notified us they needed to change the water meter. So they kept on making appointments and then no one would show. They even cluelessly claimed it wasn't their problem because they hired a contractor to do the work. Then the normal $22 water bill became $400+ with estimated fees because they tried to make their poor management my problem. If they had the keys to our checking account they could have taken the money and we would need to battle them and when they did they could have caused other legitimate bills not to be paid. I called and asked "how much do I actually owe you?" and received the same we are megacorp you are stupid response that the other utility gave me. After a long discussion the "manager" agreed to the normal monthly bill.

[aemeijers]

I trust you have told your bank to NOT link that account to your other accounts, so if a fubar'd or fraudulent transaction comes through, it can't snatch ALL your money? Don't laugh- it has happened- bank tries to be helpful, and ends up aiding a crook.

I am glad it works for you, but the only way I would trust letting outsiders tap my account on their own, is via a sacrificial account in a separate bank, and never keep more in the account than I can afford to lose. Rationally I know you are correct, and it works 99.999% of the time with no problem. But I seem to be a lightning rod for that 0.001%. Besides, writing those checks reminds me it is real money, and I need to be frugal so I don't outlive it. Automatic payment is worse than using plastic- it doesn't FEEL like spending money at all.

And unless you have your account set up for pull payments, how can anyone remotely tap it? Isn't that a flag on the account? And don't the pull payment orders have to be from specific banks/accounts/IDs?, with the vendor presenting YOUR bank with an image of one of your checks and some sort of an authorization audit trail, at least the first time? That is what all the vendors I deal with imply, in their incessant pleas to get me to start using auto-pay.

Yeah, I'm a luddite- I'd rather use cash for everything. But that isn't really possible any more, no matter what the law says.

[Han]

George wrote in news:isdm9a$rrd$ [e-mail]:

I'm with Josh. Wrong billing is something you need to deal with separately. I wouldn't stand for it either. Almost all my utility bills and credit card payments are automagically by the "pull" method. When Verizon started erroneous billing, I stopped it until they fixed their paperwork. The gasportion of my bill has often estimated readings. I either let them carry over to the next month or call them to correct it. Even with Jersey's PSE&G that hasn't been a problem. The main advantage (IMNSHO) is that if you forget to send a payment it is your fault. If they forget to pull the money it is their problem. Now I don't have to worry whether the payment gets there on time.

[Josh]

Anyone you've ever written a check to has the "keys to your bank account" already -- the routing number for the bank and the account number. The vendor doesn't send anything beyond that (and the amount, of course) to the ACH system; they keep your authorizations on file, of course, but that doesn't prevent unauthorized transactions until it's done, you complain and your bank investigates.

I always receive a bill to review showing the amount to be pulled, either online or paper -- the "pull" doesn't happen until the due date a few weeks later. If the amount isn't correct, there's time to get the utility etc to correct it, or to call the bank to get them to block that specific ACH attempt (or just empty your account :-)

Josh

[Josh]

Our checking account is linked to a savings account that has some money; I agree that we probably shouldn't have them that way, but it's not all of our savings.

All "outsiders" need to tap your account is the information on one of your checks -- the routing number and account number. If you write someone a check, you're giving them all the info they need.

Nope, you don't set anything up on your account beforehand -- all the vendor needs is your bank's routing number (the first set of numbers on your check), the account number (the second set), and the amount they want to debit.

You do submit a signed authorization to the vendor, but all they do is keep that on file (most used to require a voided check just to make sure the numbers are correct, but many don't require that anymore). If you had a dispute, the bank would ask the vendor for their documents, but that's after the fact. I'm sure the banks have some fraud detection, and would start blocking "Josh's SuperDuper Service" charges after a few complaints, but that's a different issue.

Josh

[George]

So I put my account on "autopilot" and someone pulls a lot more than they should how do I deal with that separately?

One of the best things that ever happened to prevent forgetting to pay bills is online banking. As bills come in I simply log on to the bank and post them instead of putting them in a pile. If someone sends a bizarre bill it doesn't get posted.

[Han]

George wrote in news:isfpj6$mef$ [e-mail]:

That would warrant calls to bank and whoever did it. Has never happened to me, so far .

That's fine if you don't go on vacation or off to help your kid with a family problem (happy or not). I'm sometimes away for more than a few days. Also, I keepmy money in my checking account for a longer period if I do the pull method. With the push you'd better pay a few days early to avoid problems with late payments.

[Han]

Josh wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Indeed.

[ELGY]

George wrote in news:isfpj6$mef$ [e-mail]:

That would warrant calls to bank and whoever did it. Has never happened to me, so far .

That's fine if you don't go on vacation or off to help your kid with a family problem (happy or not). I'm sometimes away for more than a few days. Also, I keepmy money in my checking account for a longer period if I do the pull method. With the push you'd better pay a few days early to avoid problems with late payments.

[JimT]

I've only had one slightly negative experience with "auto pay" but I like to be in control. ( I think we're talking about the same thing)

On another subject: The mortgage company is always sending me biweekly auto pay program suggestions. Those have to be looked inot carefully. They are usually just a way for the mortgage company to earn more interest on my money. Best thing to do is just take the two extra paydays/yr and put it towards principle. But they don't tell you that.

[Kurt Ullman]

Back in the day, I took out a 30 year mortgage (so I'd have some leeway in payments) but paid at the 15 year rate. I actually used to get communications from my lender reminding I really did not have to pay that much. Amazing the amount of money one has to spend when the kids are out of college and the mortgage is paid off.

[JimT]

We just refinanced to a lower rate and term. I plan to have mine paid off in about 10 years if not sooner (assuming my wife doesn't get that Lexus she always talking about). I'm always sending extra money on principle and they never complain. I used to make advanced payments until I found out that did very little towards increasing the principle/interest payment ratio. If I dropped back to a normal payment schedule I'd still would have paid the same interest. Seems unfair but I guess that's the way the computer processes the payments. I never could get a straight answer. The customer service people were clueless. I don't think they train them for these situations.

Congrats on paying off your house. I look forward to that feeling!

[Kurt Ullman]

Clueless is correct. There was always a place on my form to designate that I was paying extra principle. ALL of that has to go to principle. Everything I have EVER read says that you save all sorts of interest (IIRC it cut the total interest I paid by around 40% or so. K

[krw]

Correct. They can only charge interest on the outstanding balance. That said, they can make it a PITA to pay towards the balance rather than just build up money in a *very* low yield account. At one time some mortgages required that payments towards the balance had to be in monthly payment increments, just to discourage advance payments. I don't believe such is legal anymore. My mortgages haven't worked that way.

There also may be a pre-payment penalty. These are normally used to recapture paid (financed) closing costs. There may be a substantial penalty for paying more than, say, 1/5 of the mortgage in a given year for the first five years of a mortgage (or some such numbers).

[krw]

Back in the day, we couldn't/didn't pay ahead (stupid). I "retired" five years ago and we sold the house and moved a couple of times for a new job (once was a contracting position) and ended up buying again in 2008. We rolled the proceeds from the previous house in when we bought this one (half of the $300K). We learned our lesson. This house will be paid off in three years. Yes, after the kids are gone there is a lot more money in the pot. SWMBO wants a new car but the one she has now (an '00) drives fine. ;-)

[Ed Pawlowski]

"JimT" wrote

Many people have no idea about how mortgages work. As you say, the bi=weekly is a scam to get you to send estra money. All you have to do is send some extra every month and it goes to the principal and saves a ton of money.

I used a spreadsheet to track my payments and every month I'd see the big savings at the end when I made the entry. It was a good incentive to send a few bucks more. Check here for one

[Kurt Ullman]

That isn't a prepayment penalty, though. That is merely paying what you owed for services rendered. If you had paid those ahead of time (which is the bright thing to do since they charge interest on these over the term of mortgage otherwise) there would have been no additional charges. Pure prepayment penalities are illegal and have been since at least the mid-70s since I have prepaid through all of my houses. I don't view this as being a bad thing, just part of the cost of the house, like the shingles (grin). Now LETTING you take 30 years to pay off the closing costs with interest..