Bank Of America's shady "online bill pay" practice

[FormerOstrich]

3. I highly recommend

CheckFree at CheckFree

When I enrolled in 1994 I thought it was, by far, the single most improvement I had made in my life.

I must admit, I was extremely disappointed in the "web" version compared to the original windows (dial up version). However, I still believe them to be better than all the other options out there.

For large accounts the money is transferred electronically and deducted on the "pay date". For accounts, like sending a check to my sister, they generate a check just as I would had I sat down and wrote it out. The money is deducted, just as a manual check, when it is presented to the bank. If my sister doesn't ever deposit the check they''ll notify me there is a stale check out there but the money stays with me.

Any payment they make the will take care of for you. Many times over the year there has been claims of "not getting paid"..even payments like my mortgage. When that happens you notify them and they handle it and I mean they handle it. Over the years there has been issues that might have taken me weeks/months to detect and prove. As it is, they handle it no matter what the other party is throwing out there.

I still wish they would have stayed true to the original version but you'll never see me kick them to the curb!

on edit: Another advantage of CheckFree (and probably most of the centralized BillPay) over setting up automatic deductions with each vendor is you have comprehensive reports of the transactions. Otherwise, if you have your utility bill setup to auto pay the the utility company and your car payment to auto pay from the finance company, you don't have projections of all your expenditures except after the fact as they clear the bank.