Is Autopay a good or bad thing?

[SouthJamaica]

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@ptatohed wrote:

Wow, I guess I am the only one here who has all their cards set to auto pay in full, and have never had any issues.  I couldn't live without it!  In fact, it's often a requisite for mrs. ptatohed giving me the ok for a new card.  "As long as you set up auto pay and I don't have to worry about it".  lol

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I think that's great. I would do it myself except

1. You have to have sufficient money in the bank; I don't.

2. According to reports I have seen in this forum, there have been many instances of autopay failing.

3. Some lenders will hit the autopay even when no payment is due; I can't imagine how that would play out with autopay set to payment in full.

[ptatohed]

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

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@ptatohed wrote:

Wow, I guess I am the only one here who has all their cards set to auto pay in full, and have never had any issues.  I couldn't live without it!  In fact, it's often a requisite for mrs. ptatohed giving me the ok for a new card.  "As long as you set up auto pay and I don't have to worry about it".  lol

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I think that's great. I would do it myself except

1. You have to have sufficient money in the bank; I don't.

2. According to reports I have seen in this forum, there have been many instances of autopay failing.

3. Some lenders will hit the autopay even when no payment is due; I can't imagine how that would play out with autopay set to payment in full.

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That is a good point, I do keep more money than I'd like in a dud 0.10% APR checking account to cover auto-pay credit cards, auto-pay bills, a few checks, and a few debit purchases.  

[Anonymalous]

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@ptatohed wrote:

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

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@ptatohed wrote:

Wow, I guess I am the only one here who has all their cards set to auto pay in full, and have never had any issues.  I couldn't live without it!  In fact, it's often a requisite for mrs. ptatohed giving me the ok for a new card.  "As long as you set up auto pay and I don't have to worry about it".  lol

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I think that's great. I would do it myself except

1. You have to have sufficient money in the bank; I don't.

2. According to reports I have seen in this forum, there have been many instances of autopay failing.

3. Some lenders will hit the autopay even when no payment is due; I can't imagine how that would play out with autopay set to payment in full.

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That is a good point, I do keep more money than I'd like in a dud 0.10% APR checking account to cover auto-pay credit cards, auto-pay bills, a few checks, and a few debit purchases.  

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I do autopay in full, as well. I don't completely trust it, and check all my accounts a few times a month. I would prefer to set them to pay off the current balance a week before the due date, and then I'd set up an alert myself that would prompt me to manually check the payment went through in time for me to correct it, but their systems don't support that. Most only give the option to pay off the statement balance, and many don't give me much control over when the payment will be made. They're not very user-friendly, and I'm uncomfortable with the (lack of) guarantees.

[Aim_High]

I think AutoPay is great, but I only use it as a backup for the minimum payment due.  A few of my lenders will take out the Autopay regardless of manual payments that I've made, so that's a minor annoyance.  Most will disregard the Autopay if I pay manually.  I just have it set to pay minimum due to avoid late charges or late payment reports to the CRBs.  I don't always keep enough money in my checking accounts to pay off my potential balances. 

[NoHardLimits]

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@Aim_High wrote:

I think AutoPay is great, but I only use it as a backup for the minimum payment due.  A few of my lenders will take out the Autopay regardless of manual payments that I've made, so that's a minor annoyance.  Most will disregard the Autopay if I pay manually.  I just have it set to pay minimum due to avoid late charges or late payment reports to the CRBs.  I don't always keep enough money in my checking accounts to pay off my potential balances. 

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I first set up autopay last year.  I was unexpectedly hospitalized for a few days, and that got me thinking about what could have happened if I was incapacitated for a longer stretch of time.  I set up autopay to pay the full statement balances.  I didn't realize that some lenders don't take into account any manual payments that are made.  So I had one large payment go through twice, once manually and once with autopay.  Fortunately, I had enough funds in my checking account to cover both; but I quickly switched my autopay to only pay the minimum amount due.  I continue to PIF with manual payments, but I have some peace of mind knowing that no accounts will become delinquent if I experience some type of medical crisis.

[CreditCurious]

Add me to the group of people who use autopay, as well as the group of people who do not completely trust autopay.

I have been burned by autopay a couple of times in the past.  Many years ago Sprint cellular made an account error, and took hundreds of dollars each autopay out of my account every month.  This was prior to online banking and being able to check accounts easily, I was terrible at balancing my checkbook, and then everything started bouncing.

More recently one of my utilities just stopped pulling the money out of autopay.  No reason, they just stopped.  That did not stop them from being cranky and threatening to cut off service, but we worked it out.  Even though I was technically 60 days past due, they never reported it to a credit agency, and they waived interest and late fees because they made the error by erroneously stopping the autopay.

Now, all utilities, mortgage and insurance are on autopay in full.  Credit cards are autopay minimum payment, but that is just a backstop in case I fall into a coma or something.  I check all accounts twice a month, compare to due dates to make sure autopay worked, PIF any credit card account balance, and call it good.

[Anonymalous]

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@NoHardLimits wrote:

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@Aim_High wrote:

I think AutoPay is great, but I only use it as a backup for the minimum payment due.  A few of my lenders will take out the Autopay regardless of manual payments that I've made, so that's a minor annoyance.  Most will disregard the Autopay if I pay manually.  I just have it set to pay minimum due to avoid late charges or late payment reports to the CRBs.  I don't always keep enough money in my checking accounts to pay off my potential balances. 

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I first set up autopay last year.  I was unexpectedly hospitalized for a few days, and that got me thinking about what could have happened if I was incapacitated for a longer stretch of time.  I set up autopay to pay the full statement balances.  I didn't realize that some lenders don't take into account any manual payments that are made.  So I had one large payment go through twice, once manually and once with autopay.  Fortunately, I had enough funds in my checking account to cover both; but I quickly switched my autopay to only pay the minimum amount due.  I continue to PIF with manual payments, but I have some peace of mind knowing that no accounts will become delinquent if I experience some type of medical crisis.

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That's one of the maddening things about autopay -- they all have different rules and conditions. I'd like to have one central way to pay of all my cards, with a single set of rules, that I understand. That way, I'd control it.

But then I remember, the banks aren't incentivized to provide that kind of tool. They want people to screw up, so they can charge interest and fees.

I use pay in full, but when I pay a large charge off early, I spend the extra 5 minutes to check the rules at that particular bank, and if needed cancel autopay and set myself an alert to re-add it later. It's a nuisance, but that's the way the system works.

[Aim_High]

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@NoHardLimits wrote:

I first set up autopay last year.  I was unexpectedly hospitalized for a few days, and that got me thinking about what could have happened if I was incapacitated for a longer stretch of time.

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+1 ... and THAT ... is why I think everyone could benefit from having an AutoPay backstop set up on all their accounts.  Life happens, illness happens, even death happens, whether it is a family member or even your own.    While I normally PIF all my bills, I do it manually.  Distractions and even sometimes incapacitation can arise.  But DW or no one else is my life is backing me up on all of that every month.   While minimum AutoPay (only) for a couple of months on a card might run up a slight unnecessary balance from carried interest, it's better than allowing my accounts to go delinquent with both late charges and late payments reported.  

[TrapLine]

This is one of those "to each his own" ...

For me, all credit products are on "auto pay" as a safe guard using the "minimum balance". In reality, I watch my financials and pay before statement cut or credit bureau report dates (like US Bank and Elan always last business day of the month cutoff).

There are many posters that have different strategies depending on what they are looking to accomplish. Some on here test various credit reporting agencys and try a myriad of things.

[Anonymalous]

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@TrapLine wrote:

This is one of those "to each his own" ...

For me, all credit products are on "auto pay" as a safe guard using the "minimum balance". In reality, I watch my financials and pay before statement cut or credit bureau report dates (like US Bank and Elan always last business day of the month cutoff).

There are many posters that have different strategies depending on what they are looking to accomplish. Some on here test various credit reporting agencys and try a myriad of things.

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When my credit scores and limits were lower, I used to pay off my balances before the statement cut. But now that my limits and scores are high enough that balance fluctuations don't really matter, I just let them post. It shows the cards are being used, which seems to be a positive with many lenders.