the last person paying bills by check?

[ultrarunner]

Each month I pay bills for a number of different people/entities

Some are property accounts, some are elderly and also for Mom...

Recently, I've noticed an uptick is payment errors... thank goodness I have the cancelled checks as proof.

Just received a delinquent bill for underpayment plus penalty for an account I pay water for the last 30 years...

I don't have delinquent bills... not now or never.

Pulled my cancelled check and it was endorsed and deposited by water company within a week from when I received it...

Clear as day with account number and property address on face of check...

Turns out the payment was credited to someone else and not my account.

When asked how this could happen I was told I should not use checks because it is automated and mistakes happen.

In the old days there were several local offices to walk in and pay... not anymore... only one office downtown with no parking...

So far it's taken 30 minutes being passed around to resolve.

In the past 12 months similar has happened with a car insurance payment, property tax payment and HOA dues...

I can only imagine where I would be if I couldn't produce a cancelled check.

Did sign up for auto mortgage payments throught the credit union for my credit union mortgage... that too was screwed up for about 6 weeks because someone transposed the account number... since then, the last 7 years have been trouble free. At least is was from one Credit Union Account to another under one roof.

 

[ultrarunner]

Am I the last person paying bills by check?

Each month I pay bills for a number of different people/entities

Some are property accounts, some are elderly and also for Mom...

Recently, I've noticed an uptick is payment errors... thank goodness I have the cancelled checks as proof.

Just received a delinquent bill for underpayment plus penalty for an account I pay water for the last 30 years...

I don't have delinquent bills... not now or never.

Pulled my cancelled check and it was endorsed and deposited by water company within a week from when I received it...

Clear as day with account number and property address on face of check...

Turns out the payment was credited to someone else and not my account and their payment to mine.

When asked how this could happen I was told I should not use checks because it is automated and mistakes happen.

In the old days there were several local offices to walk in and pay... not anymore... only one office downtown with no parking...

So far it's taken 30 minutes being passed around to resolve.

In the past 12 months similar has happened with a car insurance payment, property tax payment and HOA dues...

I can only imagine where I would be if I couldn't produce a cancelled check.

Did sign up for auto mortgage payments through the credit union for my credit union mortgage... that too was screwed up for about 6 weeks because someone transposed the account number... since then, the last 7 years have been trouble free. At least is was from one Credit Union Account to another under one roof.

 

[timswi]

Re: Am I the last person paying bills by check?

I still pay by check as I don't want my checking account online anywhere---However, if the postal service keeps raising stamp prices, I might bite the bullet to save a not insignificant amount of money---I work for a bank too.

 

[ovrszd]

Re: Am I the last person paying bills by check?

We are the opposite of Timswi. We pay everything we can electronically. Have never had a problem. I'll write 2 or 3 checks a year. Those are to small business people I might deal with buying tires or something like that. I pay them with a check so they can avoid the electronic transaction fee of a Debit Card. I'm probably naïve, but so far, electronic payment has worked great for us.

 

[ovrszd]

Did you post this thread in two locations??

 

[DFB]

Re: Am I the last person paying bills by check?

I still write a few checks maybe 2 dozen annually, mainly my payments are all electronic BUT no automatic withdrawls. Nope

Recently I have several banking issues one was a teller that entered a cash deposit as a withdrawl...boy would that mess things up but I caught it before anything happened only because before I made my next payment I pulled up my bank account just to reassure myself on the balance whew!

The other was partially my own fault I accidently mixed 2 checks up and a banking payment got sent to the electric company and the financial institution got the other one. The electric company promptly returned the check notifying me of the error, but the bank get this...deposited the other one even though it didn't have their name on it. That didn't go over very well needless to say.

A lot of places limit now how far back you can research prior transactions online and anything beyond that cutoff you have to make request in writing to get a paper print and sometimes they require a fee too.

 

[murphy1244]

Wow not just a double post but a double thread??? Amazing

 

[ovrszd]

Wow not just a double post but a double thread??? Amazing

It's an epidemic!!!

 

[ovrszd]

Re: Am I the last person paying bills by check?

DFB, I am in no way picking on you or trying to argue.

That's why I like electronic. The problems you outlined won't happen with electronic payment.

Automatic Withdrawal, I have no problem with. All it needs is managed. That's as simple as time on the home computer.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Re: Am I the last person paying bills by check?

I only write checks to pay property taxes and just because they charge a fee to do debit, really strange way of doing business since there is no additional work involved with a debit card and no transaction fee either.