As most Americans I hate paying bills. Paying bills just get in the way of everyday life it seems and there is never a good time to do them. I have been a long time user of Yahoo’s Bill Pay Services. It is ok for most things. You can schedule reoccuring payments which come straight from your checking account and even set reminders. Some of the major credit card holders and utility services even offer online bills (which means you don’t even get a bill in the mail). Although this sounds fine and dandy I started investigating my bank’s online bill paying services. After a little bit of investigation I decided to not use their services. Below is the letter I sent them in regards to their bill pay services. Greetings,
I felt that after reviewing your bill pay services through the web I would share my comments and thoughts on the services being offered. While I would love to use your bill pay services for the convenience of paying my bills I have decided to not use the service due to the following observations:
1. The bill pay services being offered are provided through a third party called Onlinebank.com who I do not know nor trust with my personal information.
2. The firm you have chosen, OnlineBank.com, is using NT servers to provide its services. Given the recent press and attention brought about by several viruses spreading accross the internet I do not feel that I can willingly trust my financial information to a firm who uses technology that has been subject to great scrutiny in the past few weeks.
3. Having a high speed dedicated internet connection in my home and being in the web services industry I found it more troublesome having to wait over 10 – 15 seconds before a page or other information was presented. I could have written a check in the amount of time I waited for the application page to load.
Although this letter will probably not make you run out and change the way you are handling the bill pay services, I thought you may like to have a different prospective on how a technical person sees your services. I am sure you may receive feedback from some of the members who think you are offering a fantastic service. Maybe they have never heard of Yahoo’s bill pay, Quicken, or Money as they all accomplish the same task. Should someone wish to converse with me on this topic further I am free to engage in coversation at anytime. You have my information I am sure. Thanks for listening and I hope I didn’t come accross as nasty, mean or anything like that.
ZorKa
If anyone out there has a clue to a really good online bill paying solution, I am all eyes. Otherwise I guess Yahoo wins the bill paying battle hands down. If you haven’t checked Yahoo out, give it a shot.