I have a billpay service at my credit union, where payees send my bill to them and they post that bill on my list as those bills arrive. I then click “pay” on that list when I want to pay the bill.
My question;
My auto insurance company, after much bs on their part, tells me (at the call-in center) that it’s against federal law for them to send my bill to my bank. They are the only payee to make this claim.
I realize that they don’t have to, my doubt is that doing so is against federal law.
It isn’t germane to this, but I’m in California.
I’m insured with State Farm, and they send E-bills to my bank. In California.
Ask your auto insurance company for a cite to the federal law they are claiming prevents them from doing what you ask.
I don’t have an answer to your question but I pay my bills online after receiving the paper bill or downloading the PDF version from the website. Wouldn’t this work for you?
Actually, I can think of a reason why the auto insurance company doesn’t want to send the bill to your bank. Just before I receive the invoice to renew my auto insurance, I receive an updated copy of the policy along with the insurance card. Perhaps they’re concerned that you won’t get this stuff if everything is forwarded to the bank?
I have that option, and that’s how I once paid all my bills. The epay service is much more convenient, and I can program for reminders before the bills are due. My choice of how far ahead.
Earthlink is about to lose a 10 year customer because they don’t want me to pay my bill my way.
Sorry, guys, but you work for me.
I get all that stuff seperately.
Ditto.
My homeowner’s insurance sends a bill to the bank for payment. To the mortgage bank, for sure, but the point is that there seems to be no problem with them billing a bank for services rendered to me!
I’m going to call my agent directly. And the credit union. They “partner” with the insurance company.
Tell them that other auto insurance companies do this (like State Farm, as yabob said) and suggest that you might just switch your insurance to a company that will do this.
Astonishing how quickly they can react when they realize the customer can go elsewhere.
I love my bank.
I get the bill on line or in the mail.
The bank has a list of billers I set up.
I tell them who to send to & how much.
They send electronically or a paper check by stamp & envelope at no charge to me. I can add anyone I want including individuals who I might want to send more than one amount of $$ to.
I do not have to give anyone access to or rights to remove funds from my accounts.
I see all bills before they are paid.
Win, Win, Win.
Same-o here. Plus my bank will receive bills and post them on my list for me, if I so choose.
Nyah, nyah.
Well… poopie… I’ll have to ask mine about that… :smack:
Orlando, FL - We have a website from our Credit Union called MattWeb. We input/maintain a list of Payees in the Bill Payer area. Once the credit union has the payee set up, all we do each month is go to Bill Payer, select Quick Pay, put in the amounts going to each Payee and then hit Submit. Some payees get an electronic transfer and others get a “check” sent by the credit union. The Payee List shows the type of payment going out as well as the number of business days it takes to complete the transaction. After submitting the list of payments, we get a list of them, each with a Transaction Number. Also, we have stopped the snail-mail reception in our mailbox of paper bills from our cards, etc. That keeps a lot of stuff away from thieves. Instead, we get advance e-mail reminders as to when payments are coming due.
Yeah. that’s it. Works great, huh. Tha’t’s why I’m so insistant in getting my way.
Mostly. 
In your case, though, I gather the issue is that the insurance company won’t send the bill to your bank?
We have the same feature as DenAuffen has, through our credit union. But the bills themselves don’t go directly to the credit union, they come to us (via snail mail or electronically). We either manually schedule the payments via the bank, or in some cases they’re sent automatically (if the amounts are the same from month to month).
The insurance company is making stuff up. There’s no such law. Most ebills do not even contain the actual invoice, they contain the data that is needed to access the bill on the biller’s site. I would guess that your insurance company has not yet taken the minor technological steps that they need to take to automate ebills, and the customer service person is BSing you about why they can’t do it.
I work for a company that does a lot of ebill and bil payment processing for banks.
Crotalus nailed it. In addition to that, your insurance company may offer online payment (with a fee for additional revenue generation for the insurance company) through THEIR web-site and therefore intentionally refuse to cooperate with the major EBPP providers out there to allow the display of their bills within your bank’s online banking.
What bank is this??? And why have I never heard of this before??:dubious:
I swear the east coast sucks when it comes to new(ish) technology.
It’s not that unusual - my credit union does all of this and I too live on the east coast. The only capability that mangeorge has mentioned is the ability to have the bank send the bills directly to the credit union for review / approval.
There are 3rd party services online that work with some utilities etc. and want to be a central bill-paying tool, but I’ve found they work with only a handful of our bills. I think our gas and electric were the only ones when I looked around a few years back.
The rest of our bills either come in the mail, or I get an email notification (from the phone company, insurance company, or whatever) to go to their site and look at it.