When it comes to money, I try to make everything as automatic as possible. From saving money to paying bills, if there’s a way to automate it, I almost always take advantage of it. Part of each paycheck I receive is automatically invested in a Roth 401(k) and a Roth IRA, and most of my monthly bills are setup for automatic payments.
I enjoy not having to remember the due date for all of my bills — a number which seems to have grown exponentially as I’ve gotten older and started accumulating more stuff. Automatic bill payments are supposed to simplify life and help you avoid late fees, and they do — 99% of the time. This story is about the 1% of the time that they don’t.
Before moving halfway across the country for a new job last year, I stashed everything that I wouldn’t be able to take with me in a storage facility. When I rented the unit, they gave me the option to setup automatic monthly payments by giving them my credit card info, so I did it. For the past year or so, it has worked out great.
Yesterday, I got a call from the storage facility, and they told me that my credit card had been declined. When they told me that, I immediately knew why. The credit card I had been using for the automatic bill payments was canceled by my credit card company last month because of a potential security breach. I was reissued a new credit card with a new number. Of course, I completely forgot to tell the storage facility about this.
The storage facility asked for my new credit card info, so I gave it to them. Then I was in for a little surprise. Apparently, I missed my due date because of the canceled card, so they added a late fee to my bill for last month. Maybe this is why companies schedule automatic bill payments to occur just before the due date. If anything goes wrong, they can charge a late fee.
While automatic bill payments do make life a lot simpler most of the time, they aren’t perfect, and they aren’t always automatic. Like most things in life, they need a tuneup every once in awhile to keep running smoothly, and if you forget, something may slip through the cracks. I guess that’s the price we pay for convenience.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow! Maybe you can convince the storage facility to not charge you the late fee by asking what other storage facilities are nearby . . .
Anyway, sorry that happened, and thanks for the warning!
-Nate
Debt-free College
I hate automatic payments. What happens when they decide to up your monthly payment without asking you? Yeah, it’s illegal, but it happens. You’d never see your money again, but if you were paying them directly every month, you’d never write them a check to begin with.
I would call back and complain. If you’ve been with them for a long time – always paying on time – they should be willing to waive the late fee. Otherwise, I would do as Nate says and threaten to move your stuff.
Might be worth a shot, at least.
Agree w/ the above.. def worth the shot to try and get it waived!
Just curious, was the breached card with citicard credit card? Both myself and my friend had issues there -___-
Also, couldn’t you schedule your payment dates to be earlier? As it’s on your cc, there’s no loss anywhere. Does the storage facility control payment times?
Personally I get to have fun balancing my bills and stick to doing everything manually; as my finances aren’t regularized enough.
Yeah, I agree. It’s a must we need to check where our money ends up going and make sure it gets to the right place.
Companies will always overcharge us. They expect us to not be paying attention to it so it slips from under us. But that can be like $100 here and $100 there.
Thanks for the post! I had completely forgotten to change one of my autopayments to my new credit card number. I just had one reissued due to fraud as well.
Very good points. Automatic payments make my life so much easier – they keep you from having to be organized. 90% of our bills are paid this way. This is a good example of one problem that can arise with the otherwise very convenient online payments.
I think it is poor customer service by the storage facility not to waive the fee for a long time customer in a case like this.
Had the same exact thing happen to me except it wasn’t a storage facility. But the place that was taking the automatic payments ended up charging a fee to my account for the payment not going through, then i had to pay an additional amoutn to re-sign up because they had canceled my plan because of the missed payment. All because there had been a breach at my bank and they had to reissue me a new card. Needless to say, I’ve given up on MOST automatic payments and now just take one day out of my month and schedule all my payments on my own. Which in it of itself is nice because you can work around your schedule rather than the company accepting the automatic payments schedule.