Realities of Paying Bills Online

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I'm not saying this happens to everyone, but from my experiences lately, I'm starting to re-think this whole online banking/pay your bills online thing.
Since we went to broadband a few months ago, I decided to make use of some online features for banking and paying bills. I discovered a little something that I don't think a lot of people know, Paying your bills online is no faster in most cases than sending a check. I went to make a payment to a credit card. My bank has great online features and when you use your debit card, it shows up almost instantaneously. Someone steels your card and uses it, the money is back in your account the next business day.
So, I made a payment. The due date was about four days away. The next month, I see on the credit card statement, A LATE FEE? Yep. Turns out even though the payment posted to my account the next business day, it took about five or so days to post on the credit card. Then it still had to clear. It turns out that when you pay online, the money just doesn't transfer from one aco**** to another. The bank actually writes out and sends a paper check to the company whose bill you are paying! How ludicrous is that?
I found this to be the norm with most banking institutions. Don't they say paying your bills online is faster?
Here's another gem; one of our cars is a Ford Focus. In order to make payments online, you have to sign up for the e-bill service. Well when you do that, and they don't tell you this, it cancels you recieving paper bills in the mail. You get an email. I guess my timing was bad, because when I signed up, was at just the right time to cancel the paper bills, but not soon enough to kick in the email bill. So we inadvertantly missed a payment. and the due date changes every month because its on a cycle of something like the third wed of every month. Didn't know that we signed up for that either. So we are now a payment late on our car. Not a big deal, but its a bad mark.
And these are only a few of the problems we've had.
I'm going back to the old paper method. Bills get filed and sent out a week and half before they are do. Dates are marked on a calendar.
Anyone else have some bad experiences with online banking?

 

I've had money taken from my checking account twice, once due to identity theft, the other due to an on-line bill payment set up that started adding extra charges.

Call me a Luddite, but I'll hand-write my checks, put them in nicely printed security envelopes, and walk them to the post office. Very retro of me, don't ya think?

 

I have never had any problem with online banking, have worked great for me. However I have never handled a check in my life so I know nothing of those things. I just take my bill, write in the amount and a identification number found on the bill and click pay and it is paid. I use a little calculator like box for security and everything works smooth as a whistle for me. Takes me less than five minutes to pay all my bills and as far as I know they are received instantaneously. Oh and it doesnt cost a thing, if I would have paid in person at the bank or postal office I think the charge now for one bill is something akin to five bucks. So three-four bills is almost 20$. For one month.

 

It is well known that the U.S. banking system is somewhat backwords technology wise. I can tell you that in Canada there are no such problems with net banking - if I pay a bill the company receives their money that day - the funds are electronically sent to the company and there is no paper involved. I have been paying all of my bills electronically for a couple of years now and I have never had a problem.

Of course we also have a cheque clearing system that ensures that all cheques clear both parties' accounts within 24 hours of being deposited. I gather that there is still up to a week lag in the U.S. depending upon which banks are being used.

 

That is because there are several different banks with NO cooperation. In Finland, all banks have contracts about networks transfers, thus their online services work better too. As a downside, you could practically walk into any bank and still get the same terms and requirments.

 

The Canadian banks are much the same.

Well, actually there are hundreds of different U.S. banks and they do co-operate to a certain extent but, as you said, they do not have a common/shared system of procesing payments, they use different incompatible technology/systems etc.

I rather suspect that we will be seeing a lot of consolidation in the U.S. banking system over the next decade. I know that there are a lot of people in the U.S. who are opposed to the idea but quite frankly large national/international banks are much more efficient at providing services than a local banks with a single branch could ever hope to be.

Edit: It is kind of funny actually, I just paid my credit card bill on-line and I had my usual annoyed reaction at the credit card company about the fact that the payment wasn't instantly reflected in the on-line display of my credit cards balance - the payment will be as of today but the card's website only updates its listed transactions every couple days.

My bank's website on the other hand updates instantly - the transactions summary included the $60 I took out from a bank machine five minutes before I went on-line.

[ August 30, 2004, 18:17: Message edited by: JSBB ]