The Other Side to Paying Your Bills with Credit Cards
There Are Some Good Things to Say about Paying Your Bills with Credit Cards
Okay, I must relent. On more than one occasion, I have written about the fact that automatically paying your bills with credit cards can be an unwise decision. After all, there is a risk of being unable to stop automatic payments as quickly as you would like to. However, many of our visitors have written in stating that there are a number of positive points to paying your bills with credit cards, and I must agree with them on certain points.
Online Bill Payments Good, Automatic Payments Bad
Okay, I will agree that paying your bills online can often be a great way to do things. After all, you don’t have to spend money on stamps, you don’t have to run to the post office and you don’t have to write a check. Add that to the fact that your payment gets processed instantaneously and you have a pretty appealing concept.
However, there is a distinct line between online bill payment and automatic bill payments. When you make online bill payments with a credit card, you decide when you pay, how much you pay and which card you use to pay. When you have automatic payments billed to your credit cards, you lose that control.
So while I will agree that online credit card payments can indeed be an ideal solution, I hold to my convictions about automatic credit card billing.
Comments
I work at an institution where we provide one-time payments for the customer or we can set them up on an automatic withdrawl from their cc company or bank. All we need is a verbal confirmation to set up the account automatically but if you want to discontinue the use you must request a form, fill it out completely return it to us and then we will discontinue the automatic set up. This may take 2-3 weeks and during that time you may have another draw come out of the cc or bank. That's why if I do a payment with either method I will always choose the one-time option and go back the next month and the month after, but at least this way if I choose to mail in my payment or use and alternate means I certaintly can do so.
Posted by: Lori | July 22, 2006 2:55 PM