<p>It seems that, as a matter of routine, vendors such as the cable or insurance company insist on “permanent” debit from a bank account. On the surface, this seems to be quite acceptable, but I am starting to question how one can protect himself from charges that might happen after a cancellation? </p>
<p>So far, it appears that the bank will register a stop payment for a period of six months but also charge a fee. In this case, Chase wants 34 dollars. Not unusual for a bank, buy why it is difficult for someone to suspend an authorized draft by simply … deauthorizing it. I do not need a “stop payment” but want to cancel a draft for an insurance charge that has been redundant for four weeks. </p>
<p>Is there a lesson that includes to ALWAYS refuse such draft “agreement” and only accept a credit card payment?</p>
<p>After 4 moves that included dealing with account cancellations, I have always felt that paying certain bills by autodraft is… like letting a goat roam free in the vegetable garden, as my grandfather used to say. I guess my gut feeling was right:</p>
<p>I pay be phone whenever possible and we only have automatic payroll deduction for H’s medical insurance. We mostly have automatic bill payment for our convenience as the companies I deal with don’t insist on it and most of them are fine with pay be phone against our checking account. Have not had to stop any of the payments so don’t know about any unauthorized auto-payments. Believe if you give enough notice the financial institution SHOULD be able to stop the payments without charging you extra or making you pay for a stop payment fee. When we went from two payments to our landline & DSL cable company to one, we didn’t have to pay for any stop payment & it went smoothly.</p>
<p>I have the electric bill & water & TV cable bill on auto payment as well. All the other bills I like to eyeball before calling to pay be phone. Has worked well for us over the decades. Only auto-pay those bills that are a set amount & unlikely to change for us. My TV cable bill doesn’t change much–has gone from $12+/month to about $15/month over the past few decades. Our landline and DSL bill similarly doesn’t fluctuate much. Always do look at the water & electric bill; both are always pretty low.</p>
<p>I always look at my cell bill before we pay it–it has varied considerably & ALWAYS look at all the credit card bills. I like to check the charges and credits to be sure they’re accurate.</p>
<p>This makes me a dinosaur, but the only automatic payment I have is to myself, transfer into savings. I just don’t feel comfortable allowing outside parties to have access to my bank account. Especially from these big companies – I’ve seen too many mistakes, too much incompetence, and too much “We don’t give a rat’s a$$ about your problem.” The only leverage I have is that I have my money, and they don’t, and I’m not about to give that up. </p>
<p>Comcast tried to tell me that all I had to do to keep my promotional rate was to give them access to my bank account. Comcast?? Abso-freakin-lutely NOT!</p>
<p>Count me as another who would never have an auto debit from my account. I may authorize billing my credit card (at least there I have some protection), but never my personal checking or savings account. Never. And as of today, I don’t even have anyone billing my credit card.</p>
<p>I have auto debit from my checking for my auto and home insurance and for a small student loan for DS. I do monitor my checking acct online often and have never had any problems with those. </p>
<p>Cable/Directv, utilities, etc I pay online manually each month.</p>
<p>No automatic debits from bank account here either, except for the one loan originated by the same bank that holds the one account. I only have one or two bills on auto pay on the credit card, but those are both small amounts and are the same amount every month. Everything else, I pay the old fashioned way - by check and snail mail.</p>
<p>No automatic debits from my checking acct. What if I didn’t agree with the charge? What if they made a mistake by adding an extra 0? It is much harder to get money back from checking acct than from credit card. I only use AmEx to pay. If I have recurring payments, like car or insurance, with fixed amount, I would set it up with my checking acct to make regular payments. I could cancel it any time with no fee.</p>
<p>I made a mistake of paying an utility company by adding an extra 0 (4000 instead of 400) one time. They told me that it could take them up to 60 days to refund the money to me. My checking acct told me that it was out of their hand. I finally got it resolved by finding my bank’s pay online vendor, by pleading with them, they cancelled that check for me.</p>
<p>Same here - no automatic withdrawals. I’d rather spend 5 min paying on-line from my checking acct, then give someone total control over it. I want to see the bill, and I want to be able to check it.</p>
<p>In this case, security is more critical then “convenience”</p>
<p>Another dinosaur here. Absolutely no automatic withdrawals. A couple of recurring charges on a particular credit card. All bills paid by paper check snail mail.</p>
<p>No auto debit from checking. EVER. I am not a dinosaur, pay lots of bills online but had a problem with my sons gym and with paypal where it took months to get funds back in my checking account. I will no longer allow anyone access to my checking account or debit card. </p>
<p>Good thing I am not on a tight budget. I will use the credit card since they will immediately issue temporary disputes…</p>
<p>oldfort- My husband did the same thing, adding a zero to an online payment. Somehow he forgot a new car payment and got an email that it was overdue. The quickest thing to do was to pay on the auto makers financing website; he usually pays through his own online banking. Because he paid through the website, there was no check number, so when we tried to “stop payment” with our bank, they said there was nothing they could do. We called our personal banker, who also gave us the run around. My husband didn’t have all the money in his account to cover the payment, so our big mega bank decided to take money from the kids checking accounts since they are still linked with my husband’s. </p>
<p>My daughter called ranting as she had just paid her bills the night before which meant she might have bounced checks. My son had a good bit of money as his loan money had recently been deposited into his account. It took over a week to get everything straightened out, with more phone calls and emails than was necessary.</p>
<p>We have since left the mega bank and gone to a credit union for our big account. My husband still wants to keep the original account opened for a while as it allows easy access to the kids and my account as they are all linked.</p>
<p>Hmmm, sounds like some of you have had real issues with trying to stop payment. that has not been an issue with us, so far. Maybe it helps that these are smaller, local banks where we can actually talk to a real person?</p>
<p>Count me in as one who pays on-line but never allows an automatic debit. The only automatic payments go on the credit card, and then I pay the card bill on-line. If I have recurring payments set up out of checking, they are for my convenience and I can cancel them at any time. The creditors have nothing to do with it, and really have no idea that I’ve set things up that way.</p>
<p>We have automatic monthly payments from our checking account for auto and H/O insurance. Never a problem in 20+ years doing it that way. We also have the club charges for our Hilton Head house taken out automatically but also receive a paper account monthly. Also, never a problem. The other automatic payments we have - cable tv and internet - are on a credit card, and always have been. </p>
<p>All other bills are paid online through our bank. I write very few checks. The guys that look after our pool, our yard, and who plow our driveway in the winter get checks, but only because their businesses are too small to have online banking.</p>