Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
It does feel like the whole of the US is years behind in electronic payments.
I found my cheque book recently, and I haven't written a check since 2010. Even our window cleaner accepts bank transfers! And with many car parks now taking contactless payments, the need for cash has pretty much vanished too, they were the last things I carried coins for.
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A couple of issues come into play here. I've been paying our bills online for at least 10 years, but early on, some payments were made using paper checks sent by the bank. A lot has to do with the bank itself also. Now, all of my utility bills and the one credit card payment we make each month (in full) is all done electronically. The only "bill" I pay online that is issued a paper check is the one I send to our church each month. The bank sends the paper check, at no extra cost to me.
Transactions are typed into Quicken when submitted, and downloaded and reconciled easily each month.
I know some of the area banks are still behind the times when it comes to online banking, as I've heard the complaints from family members about late payments, and payments sent before the date set. In all the years I've paid bills using my bank online, I've never had one problem caused by the bank, nothing paid late, nothing sent incorrectly. We pay zero bank fees for the 3 accounts we have.
My MIL still believes that every bill I pay online gives the receiving company full access to our bank account.
We will not sign up for auto-withdrawal from any utility. A few years back, we upgraded our DirecTV receiver to HD. The next bill they sent was for $650, as the single upgrade was put through 3 or 4 times. It took 3 months and 20 hours on the phone to get it correctly straightened out. If they had my money, I'm sure it would have taken months to get that money returned to us.