Probably many of us have various subscriptions / services that are billed online, whether manually or automatically.

One of those for me is my internet service.

So far, three times in recent months, I have had to update my CC for billing. The irony here is that every time that I update it, I get a confirmation email that it has been done. But within 60 days, I get another email saying that billing was unsuccessful. I go into the account settings for billing, and lo and behold, they have OLD CC info. So I update it AGAIN. What a cluster.

But wait, there's more. The same issue has occurred with at least 2 other vendors in recent months.

None of these vendors are related / interconnected with one another.

First world problems.

quote:

Originally posted by Glynn863:

None of these vendors are related / interconnected with one another.

Maybe they are all be using the same third party billing service?

I have one subscription I pay annually to save a little money. In the past year, a new credit card was issued due to the old one expiring.

About a week before, the annual contract is up I get an e-mail that the billing was rejected and I assumed it was rejected due to using old expiration date. I open the app, and this is when it goes off the rails:

Nowhere in the app does it allow me to update my credit card

The FAQ's point to a feature that doesn't exist in the app. Either they changed the app w/o changing FAQ, or the Apple and Android versions are different.

The AI chat points to the same feature that doesn't exist in the Apple app

There is no option for talking to a person. Can only send a message, and their online message section for inputting text is titled "reason for cancellation."

I double checked and I have the latest version of the app

I received a credit card rejected e-mail every day that week, and every day tried to use the app but ended up in same infinite do loop. By the end of the week, I'm to the point of saying I'm done with them. The day after the annual contract ends, the credit card magically goes through even though I was never able to provide new expiration date.

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Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

I have the same problem with my internet service billing. I've had to change credit cards at least 3 times because of fraudulent charges (two of them were actually legit but I didn't recognize them, my bad).

But I change the credit card info with the internet service provider webpage but here's the kicker, any changes takes place after one billing cycle. So they still try to charge the now closed old credit card and I have to call to make a manual payment.

An internet provider company that can't update customers' billing information except after one billing cycle. How screwed up is that? It's not like they're a horse buggy manufacturing company.

Are you able to use a BillPay system from your bank or credit union? Some companies have an electronic relationship that allows you to schedule a payment that arrives in their system.

This allows you to control the information that the utility uses - you don't give them your information - you just send the bill to them using your customer account number with them.

This is what I do with all of my payments. No exposure of my information. There are a couple of companies that don't have the electronic relationship. Those get a check mailed by the BillPay system automatically - you just need to plan in advance to make sure the payment will arrive prior to the due date.

Some companies charge an additional fee for using a credit card for billing. I haven't run into that problem since my payment is essentially a ACH transfer.

I do the same. Only the life insurance is taken out of the checking account. That was stipulated when the policy was set up.
Just ship them money a week or so before due

OP here. Mainly because postage has gone up a lot, as well as inconsistent USPS performance, most of my debts are paid online now.

I only pay my monthly utilities, mortgage, CC, and insurance direct from my bank accounts. I do this manually.

Other "luxury" debts (Netflix, SiriusXM, Amazon as examples) are automatically paid via CC every month. These are the ones that have been having the trouble with wrong / outdated CC info.

OP here.

Well, well, well.

This morning I got a notification from my alarm service. My CC method of payment needed immediate attention because a billing attempt had been denied.

I log in, and you guessed it, they still had an OLD CC as payment method. I updated it, for the THIRD time in as many months, but this time I changed it to a completely new CC. And I got a confirming email.

So, here's waiting to next month to see if they have their poop together.

quote:

Originally posted by Glynn863:
OP here.

Well, well, well.

This morning I got a notification from my alarm service. My CC method of payment needed immediate attention because a billing attempt had been denied.

I log in, and you guessed it, they still had an OLD CC as payment method. I updated it, for the THIRD time in as many months, but this time I changed it to a completely new CC. And I got a confirming email.

So, here's waiting to next month to see if they have their poop together.

Lemme guess: ADT? BTDT.

They gave me a discount to switch to my checking account instead of a credit card.

Do you know you can always call them each year to lower your monitoring service fee?