On-Line Banking: I think I just jumped into the 90's!

I started doing it 3 years ago and absolutely love it.

I am just waiting for them to figure out a way to start charging us an access fee or something along those lines for it however. B******s !!

 

Peter, the major downside is, of course, giving people electronic access to your bank account. For this reason, and this reason alone, I refuse to use debit cards.

The next PIA is documentation. I always use my bank as my bookkeeper, i.e., I own a separate bank account for each separate business, and I'm very strict about always depositing money and writing checks out of the right account. This is a PIA during the year, but a life saver at tax time.

But an even bigger PIA is what your bank doesn't tell you. Namely, that they do not pay electronically. Let's say that you pay your Mastercard via an electronic check. Your bank doesn't immediately forward your payment on to Mastercard. What it does instead is to put your payment in a "holding" box until the bank has gathered enough payments from other people. Your bank then cuts a manual check to Mastercard for you and 3,000 other people. When Mastercard gets the check somebody, probably in India, has to manually post each payment to the correct account. If all this happens past the due date of your payment, tought titty. To verify this, ask you bank for their policy on late fees.

And postively do not do this for your utility bills, at least not in Texas. The water company shut off my water last week because my wife has been paying the water bill electronically. Long story short, the bank was sending the manual check to the home office of the water company and nobody has a clue what happened from there. All Jim-Bob at the local water company knew was that we had not paid our water bill in 6 months! We're still trying to find out where that $1,000 went....

Dr "Cash on the Barrellhead" Tax

 

We also use a different account for each business. I guess that I pay bills electronically on four or so different accounts and have for a number of years. Since we have a Private or Premier account (not sure which), when there has been any kind of a mistake, they have always called me and taken care of it without any charges. I really cannot imagine going back to the old way of writing paper checks. I also like the fact that I have 24-hour access to all of my accounts -- I can even look at a photocopy of the actual check.

If the water company was not getting your checks, then your water bill should have reflected that as it included the "past due" amount on each monthly bill.

 

I have been paying bills electronically through quicken and wells fargo for 3 years or so. I have never had a problem to date.

 

Doc.

I use Merrill Lynch online and they refund any late payment fees, have no fees for the use of the service, and refund me up to $200 a year in ATM fees.

They have gone to bat for me a couple of times with very difficult credit card people who banged me for a late fee even when the payent was made 2 wks b4 the due date.

Yes, I have to keep a good sized balance with them, (sotcks or cash, they don't care) but they will even mail checks to my little piddly bills like the pooper scooper guy and such.

So, I guess it's good for personal, maybe not so good for business?

And yes, I have a guy collect the poop once a week for $10, we have a mastiff so it can be a pretty heavy load.

 

I love my online banking! I won't ever go back. Have never had a problem with it either. Between the ATM, my Visa check card, and the Internet, I hardly ever write out a check anymore.

 

I remember starting with Bank of America in 1984. Back then, you used your speedy 1200 baud modem to dial in one of the proprietary B of A phone numbers and could do bill pay on only merchants approved by B of A in their little yellow directory book. All text, no graphics.

Flash forward to the 21st century and you can click and pay anyone anywhere and even look at the image of the actual check that cleared your account the day before...

 

We use Internet Banking for business too - it's great for those monthly tax payments to the govt. Also use hyperwallet (www.hyperwallet.com) to pay the smaller independent guys desperate for payment.

By all means, go for it. If only because we have a number of customer's paying us to help build the network infrastructure for these services ;->