[caymanjim]

> So, little embarrassed to admit this, but: I plumb forgot to set up autopay on my Apple Card when I first got it.

Why is that embarassing? Why on earth would you set up auto-pay? That's just asking for a headache if anything is every compromised, or if a vendor fraudulently or accidentally overcharges you. Reversing charges from your bank is a headache, and rogue charges can quickly cascade into a series of overdrafts, other failed payments, etc. Good luck getting reimbursed for all the charges if that happens, and hope it doesn't get you into a situation where you can't pay an important bill.

It's madness to ever allow automatic financial transactions that aren't fixed, scheduled payments from trusted vendors.

[komocode]

> Why on earth would you set up auto-pay?

I've setup auto-pay on several accounts and left it running for over a decade. whatever issue I may have in the future would not exceed the amount of time wasted in manually paying each account.

[nullserver]

A surprise 17,000 electric Bill?

I don’t hear about it much anymore but for years was terrified of making a cell data mistake and ending up with a 40k+ bill.

[ProfessorLayton]

Not sure I understand this, because autopay or not, if you accrue a 17k bill for a service then that's what's due unless you negotiate otherwise, and the lack of autopay is irrelevant.

If you're worried about funds disappearing unexpectedly, many major U.S. banks wave checking account fees with direct deposits setup. It's trivial to setup a bank account with multiple checking/savings accounts, where one account is funded as necessary with expected spending, and have the excess go into the other checking/savings account(s).

That's a best practice anyway, since having a debit card hacked into is a much bigger ordeal than a credit card, so keeping that checking account with minimal funds is optimal.

[manicdee]

> if you accrue a 17k bill for a service then that's what's due

Au contraire: every time I have had a large bill it has been because the biller stuffed up.

Water utility couldn't read the water meter because of the dog so they estimated based on past usage. I don't have a dog. They estimated using someone else's meter. They overcharged me by an order of magnitude.

Electricity utility couldn't read the meter because of the dog, so they too estimated based on past usage. Again, I don't have a dog and they estimated based on the average usage of a house my size (typically a family of 4 to 8). They overcharged me by a factor of three or so.

At one point I changed my mobile phone plan to one that had a special offer going. It took three months for the company to get the amount right, and then it took another three months to get my money back for the first three months they billed incorrectly.

With any system that has variable costs (such as usage fees) I far prefer to receive a bill and pay it by hand because it only takes one error to completely wipe me out financially.

Note about the dog above: at one point the utility company wanted access to my yard to perform some maintenance on the electricity transmission lines (in my town the aerial electrical services are in the back yard to improve the street aesthetic). I asked them to please call me so I can lock up my chickens. The person I talked to didn't have a box to tick for "chickens" so they ticked the box that said "dog". Since then I have not had a meter reader actually read my meters, every bill is "estimated because of dog." I have to take a photo of the meter and send it in to them because they're too lazy to read it themselves.

[jjav]

If some service suddenly tries to charge 17K it's almost certainly an error on their part.

With autopay that error can propagate into draining your account and then all your other autopay accounts that come later get rejected and you'll get penalties and late charges on those.

The first provider, the one who made a mistake, can be talked into correcting it (hopefully anyway). But all the other penalties you'll be responsible for since your account was indeed empty.

So there are real risks to autopay. Maybe not too frequent, but good to be aware.

[ProfessorLayton]

This is a misunderstanding of what I said, I agree that a 17k utility bill is most certainly a mistake.

But for example, if your autopay bills with direct access to your checking account total 2k/mo then it makes sense to limit the funds of that checking account to roughly that much, maybe a bit more incase of variance. If a utility tried to withdraw 17k from an account that only has 2.5k in it, it will not be able to do so (Overdraft "protection" can be turned off).

If there's a small buffer in the checking account, other bills should not cascade from one large anomaly in that case, because the bank won't hand out partial payments.

Yes, there are still risks with autopay, but they're greatly mitigated with a dedicated checking account for that specific purpose. Furthermore, forgetting to pay one of the several bills manually is a risk in and of itself. I'm just pointing out that setting up autopay doesn't necessarily mean giving unlimited access to one's funds.

[nullserver]

Flew to another country once, with a newborn baby. Flight attendant was having some trouble then declared it all good.

What I didn’t realize was she canceling and redoing the tickets over and over again, each charging me for them. A grand each time. So I ended up in a foreign country penniless. Airline company said it was fine since my funds would be returned in a week.

[austhrow743]

Negotiating is a lot easier before you send the money.

[ac29]

I've known people who received huge bills where it was the billing companies fault (such as a bad meter for utility service). On autopay, it would have been a real chore to claw back the amount overpaid.

[nullserver]

Bunch of people in Texas just got surprise massive electric bills.

[MeinBlutIstBlau]

My electric company where I lived a few years ago would take mailed in check or autopay ach only. No cc, no manual payments via ach. They were a little behind...

[nullserver]

Mine is prepaid.

One day I got a text that my balance was low. As I picked up my phone I got another saying balance was 0. While I was opening the app to add funds I got another text saying my service would be turned off if I didn’t pay.

While on the confirm payment screen my power went out.

All happened in about 10 seconds.

[ArchOversight]

None of the electric bills in Texas should have been a surprise. Those people chose to pay market rate for their electricity, that is not always going to turn out well for the consumer during events that would lead to market rate being completely out of wack.

[nullserver]

Victim blaming?

So you think any of the resized how absurdly high market rates can get.

[ljm]

So I guess this is a US thing. Is 'auto-pay' the same thing as setting up a monthly direct debit to pay either your minimum payment, a percentage, or to clear the full balance?

If that's the case, and I can only speak for my experience in the UK and across the EU for a few years, I'll take the automated payment over the infinitesimal threat of being compromised and clicking a 'dispute this payment' link in my account.

ATM withdrawals have far more risk and you wouldn't do those with a credit card.

[tzs]

> So I guess this is a US thing. Is 'auto-pay' the same thing as setting up a monthly direct debit to pay either your minimum payment, a percentage, or to clear the full balance?

There are a variety of things someone could mean when they say "auto-pay" in the US, including:

1. Authorizing a merchant to keep your credit card info on file and to charge that whenever they want to bill you,

2. Providing a merchant with your checking account information and authorizing them to take money from there whenever they want to bill you,

3. Many banks include a bill paying service for free with your checking account, which can be configured to receive bills electronically from many merchants, and to automatically pay them from your checking account. Many banks will allow you to choose whether to automatically pay the full bill amount, the minimum due amount, the full balance amount, or a fixed amount, and will allow you to set a maximum amount.

4. For merchants that can not send bills electronically to your bank's bill paying service, many banks will let your configure the bill paying service to send the merchant a fixed amount on a regular schedule.

5. For bills for credit cards issued by the same bank where you have your checking account, there is often an auto-pay feature to automatically pay your credit card from that checking account.

This often means that there are several ways to auto-pay a given bill. For example, I could auto-pay my electric bill by method #1, method #2, or method #3. If I used method #1, I could auto-pay that credit card with #2 and maybe #3.

[ljm]

Heh, we generally cover all of that with a direct debit across the pond, both in the UK and EU (through SEPA). There isn't really a notion of an 'automatic bill paying service', you offer the provider the mandate to take payment from your account. This mandate is fully transferable and revocable and encoded in a standardised format.

You wouldn't be able to run a bank without it. Most monthly outgoings will be through such an agreement.

(I've worked on such systems. XML up the wazoo but you're expected to be able to cryptographically verify a mandate years after the fact, for auditing purposes, so the format works. And it's all API'd up.)

[gabagool]

Yes, that's exactly what auto-pay is. I'm in the US myself and in my experience, almost everyone advocates auto-pay. Some people may choose to pay early and some people may not be able to pay, but generally people in the US are recommended to set up auto-pay.

[vecinu]

Sorry but how is this dangerous? You don't have your credit cards on autopay?

I regularly verify what transactions show up across my cards and you have 30 days to dispute anything.

10+ years and I never had an issue.

[RandallBrown]

I don't actually auto pay any of my credit cards.

I keep my checking account balance intentionally low and often run into times where paying off my cards would overdraft me.

I don't think it's all that crazy of a thing to do, I just don't do it.

[ryandrake]

Same here. I carefully plan my bill paying schedule so as to never go below zero in my checking account. Sometimes that involves deferring payments until the next paycheck. With AutoPay I give up that ability to schedule exactly when the money goes out.

Additionally, I like to review every bill I pay to make sure it makes sense. I've had to dispute bills in the past that were unexplainably incorrect by $10, $20, sometimes close to $50, and if I had them on AutoPay I probably wouldn't have even noticed it.

[ogre_codes]

Every card which I've owned has allowed an option to autopay the minimum payment. This way you don't have to deal with accidentally missing a payment which can be quite costly.

That said, the real solution here is to not spend more than you can pay off. Every time you carry over your balance, it's a big win for the credit companies. If you get to the end of the pay period and your card balance is greater than your checking balance, then you lose.

[coliveira]

I don't autopay credit cards. I only do this for accounts that have fixed value and require little overseeing, e.g., car payments. Any of my credit cards are payed only when I review the amount and make the decision.

[throwaway0a5e]

Some people use their CC as an accounts payable. It acts like a buffer to give you time to dispute BS nuisance charges.

[ls612]

Credit card auto pay only happens 4 weeks or more after the charges post. If there is fraudulent activity on your account there’s lots of time to address it before it becomes a bank charge.

[coliveira]

Depends on when the charge was made. If the charge was made the day before the scheduled payment, you will have problems.

[whiddershins]

Shouldn’t be true because that should go in the next month

[URSpider94]

The autopay typically comes out the last day that you can make a payment in the current cycle, which is 20-25 days after the cycle closes. You’ll always have a minimum 2-3 weeks to review the charges before the autopay goes out.

[wmf]

Also AFAIK you can still dispute charges after you have paid them; if you win the dispute you'll get credited later.

[cortesoft]

> That's just asking for a headache if anything is every compromised, or if a vendor fraudulently or accidentally overcharges you

How is any of that specific for auto pay? Non-auto pay transactions can be compromised, and a non-auto pay vendor can fraudulently charge you, too.

[kbelder]

I think the posters touting autopay should review the 'experience of being poor-ish'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300139

I'd _never_ let any major bills pull directly from my accounts. I'm bothered just by having a recurring Netflix draw. I'm not claiming one perspective is right and the other wrong... but that my history and experiences have strongly trained me into one behavior, and yours into another.

[notJim]

The hit on your credit report that can last many years if you pay late is far more of a risk than fraud, IME. I forgot to pay my credit card 6 years ago, and that has been hurting me ever since, including on my mortgage. Finally fell off just this year.

[ogre_codes]

> Why on earth would you set up auto-pay?

Because it's super convenient. I resisted a long time and just had some of my accounts set to pay minimum payments, but that got expensive when I forgot to make manual payments.

Regardless, the important bit here isn't so much that he forgot autopay, it's that he didn't pay at all for 3 months.

[quickthrowman]

I auto-pay all my bills (rent, utilities, etc), but manually pay my credit cards weekly. I have auto-pay set up on CCs as a backup just in case I ever fall into a coma and can’t make a manual payment. It only auto-pays on a specific date, so you can dispute any charges prior to then.

[Symbiote]

Other than shopping, I don't think I have any payments from my account that aren't auto-pay (direct debit, the other person chooses the amount).

I check the bank account every 6 weeks or so, and can investigate then if necessary. It's never been necessary.

[bradgessler]

You can monitor transactions on services like Mint or Personal Capital daily or weekly. When you see a fraudulent charge, you dispute it, even if you’ve already auto-paid the balance.

[king_magic]

Eh, I disagree. I keep an eye on my credit card balances on a regular basis. It's nice to have autopay on for the credit cards I use less. Helps avoid late fees.

[m463]

most autopay setups are not dangerous.

autopay on a credit card is great.

But some are. the sketchy and hard-to-cancel services.