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     | Tuesday, May 16, 2000 - 03:01 pm  I just signed up with paytrust.com to have them pay my bills. Their instructions: "For bills that you choose to have redirected to Paytrust, your new billing address is: Paytrust **** P.O. BOX 880418 San Francisco,CA,94188-0418 Some merchants ask for your billing address to confirm your identity with them. Reference this billing address when verifying credit card information by telephone or entering a billing address on the Internet. Please remember that you should specify your home, office or other address for receiving shipments." So where will my credit data be reported? If I order a credit report, should I use the billing address? How will my Credit Scores be impacted? I'll greatly appreciate any feedback.
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| | Wednesday, June 21, 2000 - 07:48 am Christine, This isn't an answer to your question, but after careful consideration I have avoided PayTrust and like services because I foresee an endless nightmare of credit repair if something goes wrong with their systems. They guarantee to pay late charges if payments are delayed through their fault, but they DON'T guarantee to fix your credit file  As for the address question, I don't *KNOW* but I *SUSPECT* that the CRA will hold your residential address, not your billing address. For example people might want their bills coming to a PO box which isn't a real address. So if you're asked for your billing address when ordering something, enter the PayTrust address, and if you're applying for credit or asking for a credit report, enter your residential address.
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| | Wednesday, June 21, 2000 - 12:26 pm I wished we'd know for sure with regards to the credit card address. I think it's unlikely that the creditors keep TWO addresses, one for billing and one for your residence. Finding out for sure will probably take many hours of research. I actually have MANY examples to prove that having someone else pay the bills will REDUCE the number of payment/credit problems, especially when transfers are made electronically. After all, I've been online banking and bill paying for MANY years now, with an average of 30+ checks a month for several years. I could literally write for the next fifty hours .... Aside from my own experiences, my clients' credit nightmares often started with misapplied and lost checks, or even worse, money orders. You say "... I foresee an endless nightmare of credit repair if something goes wrong with their systems. They guarantee to pay late charges if payments are delayed through their fault, but they DON'T guarantee to fix your credit file." That makes no sense at all. A late payment doesn't go on the credit until it's 30 days late. So, let's say they totally screw up, send the notifications that they mailed the checks while they didn't. Unless I was off-line for a month, I'd certainly notice that none of the checks cleared my bank account. It's highly unlikely (IMPOSSIBLE?) that nobody else notices the problem or that only my account was affected. Of course, I'd also get new bills with the late charge, again indicating that the payments weren't made. I can't see a credit problem arising AT ALL. I'd say your fear of problems with Paytrust is about as justified as your fear of paying with a check because the bank could screw up. Do you pay your bills with cash via the postal service? I MUCH prefer Paytrust or any other service who will electronically transfer the funds to most creditors/vendors. At least the post office won't be able to lose my mail and the creditors can't charge me any fraudulent late fees while "processing the payments" days or weeks after actual receipt.
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| | Wednesday, June 21, 2000 - 04:08 pm i don't see how automatic bill paying can harm credit at all. in fact, i am sure it has helped mine. my credit cards (and other bills) are always paid right on time because i don't have to take the time to write out the checks and mail them. my bills do not get misplaced because they go directly to my bill payer. i use statusfactory.com and my credit reports show both addresses - my billing and my physical.
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| | Wednesday, June 21, 2000 - 06:26 pm If you're scared of the bill payment service going smoothly you can send two payments the first month. One manually and one electronically to ensure that everything goes properly. I use a bill payment system and I've never been late on anything.
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| | Wednesday, June 21, 2000 - 10:03 pm M Hughes, thanks so much for the info about your credit report and statusfactory.com, just looked them up and they seem to be offering the same services as Paytrust. So the credit shows both addresses, and I wonder if there is any impact on Credit Scores. My E-mail to my Fair Isaac contact just was returned undeliverable. Darn. Shylock, I think it's rather telling that with nearly 4,000 postings here nobody ever complained about screwups by bill paying services. Bank@home has been around a long time now, and when I scheduled a check to go out, it went out exactly as per my instructions. EVERY TIME.
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| | Thursday, June 22, 2000 - 04:31 am Hmm, OK... I guess we can put it down to unreasonable fear on my part (no, I'm not being sarcastic). Where possible, I do like direct debit by the creditor itself, but I am leery of the online centralized payment services. If I could have my ideal world, I'd like everyone who sends me a bill to allow me to pay using a credit card over the Internet. That way I can keep a hold of my money for the longest time possible. Using a credit card allows me to time-shift inconvenient bills after my next paycheck, for instance. And it allows me to select the exact day I will mark the money off as "spent". I guess it all boils down to a personal terror I have of being a "special case". I have an ingrained phobia that whenever I don't fall in alongside an existing category of customer, it reflects badly on me. For instance; the fact that my previous address is a non-US address, the fact that when I marry, my fiance-to-be wants to keep her name - all these sorts of things make me very uneasy because I feel that I won't fit nicely into corporate pigeonholes when I'm filling out forms. Maybe I'm institutionalized ;)
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| | Thursday, June 22, 2000 - 01:44 pm hahaha like your humor. "Where possible, I do like direct debit by the creditor itself, but I am leery of the online centralized payment services." I used to really like it when they debited my credit cards directly, but in the last few months I've had several problems with that practice, so I'll change EVERYTHING I can to Paytrust. I'll still have those creditor paid automatically, but I'll be in control to stop these payments any time I want to when going through Paytrust. But at least I can dispute charges on the credit cards, although it is a real hassle. However, I'll NEVER EVER let them direct debit my bank account again. I'll never forget the hassles I've had trying to end an automatic debit. 30 days written notice was required by my bank! Of course they already had debited one payment that wasn't supposed to be on there by the time my 30 days started. I had contacted the creditor instead of the bank to cancel the direct debit, and they hadn't processed it. There was NOTHING I could do to prevent the 2nd unauthorized debit about 3 weeks later. Never again. I also learned the hard way that the VISA/MC debit cards do NOT have the same dispute privileges as the credit cards, even when used as a CREDIT card.
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| | Thursday, June 22, 2000 - 03:01 pm I posted the entire Paytrust change of address notification at http://www.bayhouse.com/discus/messages/527/563.html?961718291#POST4023
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| | Thursday, June 22, 2000 - 03:10 pm Weeellllp... the only deliberate humor in my message was the "maybe I'm institutionalized" comment at the end. I honestly fear being a round peg in a square hole as far as official forms go. Nothing gives me a greater sense of relief than hearing someone say "your case is a very common pattern". Really! Point well taken about debit cards. The only time I use mine is when I have some reason not to use my credit card (ie waiting for a big charge to hit). I would NEVER use it online. The only company that directly debits my checking account is Bell Atlantic. I did at one stage have AOL billing me that way as well (before I got a credit card), but there was no problem with canceling that - unless you count the fact that I get a CD-ROM every other week begging me to sign up again.
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