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> So, little embarrassed to admit this, but: I plumb forgot to set up autopay on my Apple Card when I first got it. Why is that embarassing? Why on earth would

> So, little embarrassed to admit this, but: I plumb forgot to set up autopay on my Apple Card when I first got it. Why is that embarassing? Why on earth would you set up auto-pay? That's just asking for a headache if anything is every compromised, or if a vendor fraudulently or accidentally overcharges you. Reversing charges from your bank is a headache, and rogue charges can quickly cascade into a series of overdrafts, other failed payments, etc. Good luck getting reimbursed for all the charges if that happens, and hope it doesn't get you into a situation where you can't pay an important bill. It's madness to ever allow automatic financial transactions that aren't fixed, scheduled payments from trusted vendors.

vecinu 6y ago
Sorry but how is this dangerous? You don't have your credit cards on autopay? I regularly verify what transactions show up across my cards and you have 30 days to dispute anything. 10+ years and I never had an issue.
- RandallBrown 6y ago
  I don't actually auto pay any of my credit cards. I keep my checking account balance intentionally low and often run into times where paying off my cards would overdraft me. I don't think it's all that crazy of a thing to do, I just don't do it.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Same here. I carefully plan my bill paying schedule so as to never go below zero in my checking account. Sometimes that involves deferring payments until the next paycheck. With AutoPay I give up that ability to schedule exactly when the money goes out. Additionally, I like to review every bill I pay to make sure it makes sense. I've had to dispute bills in the past that were unexplainably incorrect by $10, $20, sometimes close to $50, and if I had them on AutoPay I probably wouldn't have even noticed it.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    Every card which I've owned has allowed an option to autopay the minimum payment. This way you don't have to deal with accidentally missing a payment which can be quite costly. That said, the real solution here is to not spend more than you can pay off. Every time you carry over your balance, it's a big win for the credit companies. If you get to the end of the pay period and your card balance is greater than your checking balance, then you lose.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Some people use their CC as an accounts payable. It acts like a buffer to give you time to dispute BS nuisance charges.
- coliveira 6y ago
  I don't autopay credit cards. I only do this for accounts that have fixed value and require little overseeing, e.g., car payments. Any of my credit cards are payed only when I review the amount and make the decision.
komocode 6y ago
> Why on earth would you set up auto-pay? I've setup auto-pay on several accounts and left it running for over a decade. whatever issue I may have in the future would not exceed the amount of time wasted in manually paying each account.
- nullserver 6y ago
  A surprise 17,000 electric Bill? I don’t hear about it much anymore but for years was terrified of making a cell data mistake and ending up with a 40k+ bill.
  - ArchOversight 6y ago
    None of the electric bills in Texas should have been a surprise. Those people chose to pay market rate for their electricity, that is not always going to turn out well for the consumer during events that would lead to market rate being completely out of wack.
    - nullserver 6y ago
      Victim blaming? So you think any of the resized how absurdly high market rates can get.
  - ProfessorLayton 6y ago
    Not sure I understand this, because autopay or not, if you accrue a 17k bill for a service then that's what's due unless you negotiate otherwise, and the lack of autopay is irrelevant. If you're worried about funds disappearing unexpectedly, many major U.S. banks wave checking account fees with direct deposits setup. It's trivial to setup a bank account with multiple checking/savings accounts, where one account is funded as necessary with expected spending, and have the excess go into the other checking/savings account(s). That's a best practice anyway, since having a debit card hacked into is a much bigger ordeal than a credit card, so keeping that checking account with minimal funds is optimal.
    - 6y ago
ls612 6y ago
Credit card auto pay only happens 4 weeks or more after the charges post. If there is fraudulent activity on your account there’s lots of time to address it before it becomes a bank charge.
- coliveira 6y ago
  Depends on when the charge was made. If the charge was made the day before the scheduled payment, you will have problems.
  - whiddershins 6y ago
    Shouldn’t be true because that should go in the next month
  - wmf 6y ago
    Also AFAIK you can still dispute charges after you have paid them; if you win the dispute you'll get credited later.
  - URSpider94 6y ago
    The autopay typically comes out the last day that you can make a payment in the current cycle, which is 20-25 days after the cycle closes. You’ll always have a minimum 2-3 weeks to review the charges before the autopay goes out.
king_magic 6y ago
Eh, I disagree. I keep an eye on my credit card balances on a regular basis. It's nice to have autopay on for the credit cards I use less. Helps avoid late fees.
cortesoft 6y ago
> That's just asking for a headache if anything is every compromised, or if a vendor fraudulently or accidentally overcharges you How is any of that specific for auto pay? Non-auto pay transactions can be compromised, and a non-auto pay vendor can fraudulently charge you, too.
m463 6y ago
most autopay setups are not dangerous. autopay on a credit card is great. But some are. the sketchy and hard-to-cancel services.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> Why on earth would you set up auto-pay? Because it's super convenient. I resisted a long time and just had some of my accounts set to pay minimum payments, but that got expensive when I forgot to make manual payments. Regardless, the important bit here isn't so much that he forgot autopay, it's that he didn't pay at all for 3 months.
ljm 6y ago
So I guess this is a US thing. Is 'auto-pay' the same thing as setting up a monthly direct debit to pay either your minimum payment, a percentage, or to clear the full balance? If that's the case, and I can only speak for my experience in the UK and across the EU for a few years, I'll take the automated payment over the infinitesimal threat of being compromised and clicking a 'dispute this payment' link in my account. ATM withdrawals have far more risk and you wouldn't do those with a credit card.
- gabagool 6y ago
  Yes, that's exactly what auto-pay is. I'm in the US myself and in my experience, almost everyone advocates auto-pay. Some people may choose to pay early and some people may not be able to pay, but generally people in the US are recommended to set up auto-pay.
- tzs 6y ago
  > So I guess this is a US thing. Is 'auto-pay' the same thing as setting up a monthly direct debit to pay either your minimum payment, a percentage, or to clear the full balance? There are a variety of things someone could mean when they say "auto-pay" in the US, including: 1. Authorizing a merchant to keep your credit card info on file and to charge that whenever they want to bill you, 2. Providing a merchant with your checking account information and authorizing them to take money from there whenever they want to bill you, 3. Many banks include a bill paying service for free with your checking account, which can be configured to receive bills electronically from many merchants, and to automatically pay them from your checking account. Many banks will allow you to choose whether to automatically pay the full bill amount, the minimum due amount, the full balance amount, or a fixed amount, and will allow you to set a maximum amount. 4. For merchants that can not send bills electronically to your bank's bill paying service, many banks will let your configure the bill paying service to send the merchant a fixed amount on a regular schedule. 5. For bills for credit cards issued by the same bank where you have your checking account, there is often an auto-pay feature to automatically pay your credit card from that checking account. This often means that there are several ways to auto-pay a given bill. For example, I could auto-pay my electric bill by method #1, method #2, or method #3. If I used method #1, I could auto-pay that credit card with #2 and maybe #3.
Symbiote 6y ago
Other than shopping, I don't think I have any payments from my account that aren't auto-pay (direct debit, the other person chooses the amount). I check the bank account every 6 weeks or so, and can investigate then if necessary. It's never been necessary.
madengr 6y ago
I don't know why you are being downvoted. One has to be crazy to allow a business direct access to you primary checking account.
quickthrowman 6y ago
I auto-pay all my bills (rent, utilities, etc), but manually pay my credit cards weekly. I have auto-pay set up on CCs as a backup just in case I ever fall into a coma and can’t make a manual payment. It only auto-pays on a specific date, so you can dispute any charges prior to then.
notJim 6y ago
The hit on your credit report that can last many years if you pay late is far more of a risk than fraud, IME. I forgot to pay my credit card 6 years ago, and that has been hurting me ever since, including on my mortgage. Finally fell off just this year.
kbelder 6y ago
I think the posters touting autopay should review the 'experience of being poor-ish' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300139 I'd _never_ let any major bills pull directly from my accounts. I'm bothered just by having a recurring Netflix draw. I'm not claiming one perspective is right and the other wrong... but that my history and experiences have strongly trained me into one behavior, and yours into another.
bradgessler 6y ago
You can monitor transactions on services like Mint or Personal Capital daily or weekly. When you see a fraudulent charge, you dispute it, even if you’ve already auto-paid the balance.

vecinu 6y ago

Sorry but how is this dangerous? You don't have your credit cards on autopay? I regularly verify what transactions show up across my cards and you have 30 days to dispute anything. 10+ years and I never had an issue.

RandallBrown 6y ago
I don't actually auto pay any of my credit cards. I keep my checking account balance intentionally low and often run into times where paying off my cards would overdraft me. I don't think it's all that crazy of a thing to do, I just don't do it.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Same here. I carefully plan my bill paying schedule so as to never go below zero in my checking account. Sometimes that involves deferring payments until the next paycheck. With AutoPay I give up that ability to schedule exactly when the money goes out. Additionally, I like to review every bill I pay to make sure it makes sense. I've had to dispute bills in the past that were unexplainably incorrect by $10, $20, sometimes close to $50, and if I had them on AutoPay I probably wouldn't have even noticed it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Every card which I've owned has allowed an option to autopay the minimum payment. This way you don't have to deal with accidentally missing a payment which can be quite costly. That said, the real solution here is to not spend more than you can pay off. Every time you carry over your balance, it's a big win for the credit companies. If you get to the end of the pay period and your card balance is greater than your checking balance, then you lose.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Some people use their CC as an accounts payable. It acts like a buffer to give you time to dispute BS nuisance charges.
coliveira 6y ago
I don't autopay credit cards. I only do this for accounts that have fixed value and require little overseeing, e.g., car payments. Any of my credit cards are payed only when I review the amount and make the decision.

komocode 6y ago

> Why on earth would you set up auto-pay? I've setup auto-pay on several accounts and left it running for over a decade. whatever issue I may have in the future would not exceed the amount of time wasted in manually paying each account.

nullserver 6y ago
A surprise 17,000 electric Bill? I don’t hear about it much anymore but for years was terrified of making a cell data mistake and ending up with a 40k+ bill.
- ArchOversight 6y ago
  None of the electric bills in Texas should have been a surprise. Those people chose to pay market rate for their electricity, that is not always going to turn out well for the consumer during events that would lead to market rate being completely out of wack.
  - nullserver 6y ago
    Victim blaming? So you think any of the resized how absurdly high market rates can get.
- ProfessorLayton 6y ago
  Not sure I understand this, because autopay or not, if you accrue a 17k bill for a service then that's what's due unless you negotiate otherwise, and the lack of autopay is irrelevant. If you're worried about funds disappearing unexpectedly, many major U.S. banks wave checking account fees with direct deposits setup. It's trivial to setup a bank account with multiple checking/savings accounts, where one account is funded as necessary with expected spending, and have the excess go into the other checking/savings account(s). That's a best practice anyway, since having a debit card hacked into is a much bigger ordeal than a credit card, so keeping that checking account with minimal funds is optimal.
  - 6y ago

ls612 6y ago

Credit card auto pay only happens 4 weeks or more after the charges post. If there is fraudulent activity on your account there’s lots of time to address it before it becomes a bank charge.

coliveira 6y ago
Depends on when the charge was made. If the charge was made the day before the scheduled payment, you will have problems.
- whiddershins 6y ago
  Shouldn’t be true because that should go in the next month
- wmf 6y ago
  Also AFAIK you can still dispute charges after you have paid them; if you win the dispute you'll get credited later.
- URSpider94 6y ago
  The autopay typically comes out the last day that you can make a payment in the current cycle, which is 20-25 days after the cycle closes. You’ll always have a minimum 2-3 weeks to review the charges before the autopay goes out.

king_magic 6y ago

Eh, I disagree. I keep an eye on my credit card balances on a regular basis. It's nice to have autopay on for the credit cards I use less. Helps avoid late fees.

cortesoft 6y ago

> That's just asking for a headache if anything is every compromised, or if a vendor fraudulently or accidentally overcharges you How is any of that specific for auto pay? Non-auto pay transactions can be compromised, and a non-auto pay vendor can fraudulently charge you, too.

m463 6y ago

most autopay setups are not dangerous. autopay on a credit card is great. But some are. the sketchy and hard-to-cancel services.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> Why on earth would you set up auto-pay? Because it's super convenient. I resisted a long time and just had some of my accounts set to pay minimum payments, but that got expensive when I forgot to make manual payments. Regardless, the important bit here isn't so much that he forgot autopay, it's that he didn't pay at all for 3 months.

ljm 6y ago

So I guess this is a US thing. Is 'auto-pay' the same thing as setting up a monthly direct debit to pay either your minimum payment, a percentage, or to clear the full balance? If that's the case, and I can only speak for my experience in the UK and across the EU for a few years, I'll take the automated payment over the infinitesimal threat of being compromised and clicking a 'dispute this payment' link in my account. ATM withdrawals have far more risk and you wouldn't do those with a credit card.

gabagool 6y ago
Yes, that's exactly what auto-pay is. I'm in the US myself and in my experience, almost everyone advocates auto-pay. Some people may choose to pay early and some people may not be able to pay, but generally people in the US are recommended to set up auto-pay.
tzs 6y ago
> So I guess this is a US thing. Is 'auto-pay' the same thing as setting up a monthly direct debit to pay either your minimum payment, a percentage, or to clear the full balance? There are a variety of things someone could mean when they say "auto-pay" in the US, including: 1. Authorizing a merchant to keep your credit card info on file and to charge that whenever they want to bill you, 2. Providing a merchant with your checking account information and authorizing them to take money from there whenever they want to bill you, 3. Many banks include a bill paying service for free with your checking account, which can be configured to receive bills electronically from many merchants, and to automatically pay them from your checking account. Many banks will allow you to choose whether to automatically pay the full bill amount, the minimum due amount, the full balance amount, or a fixed amount, and will allow you to set a maximum amount. 4. For merchants that can not send bills electronically to your bank's bill paying service, many banks will let your configure the bill paying service to send the merchant a fixed amount on a regular schedule. 5. For bills for credit cards issued by the same bank where you have your checking account, there is often an auto-pay feature to automatically pay your credit card from that checking account. This often means that there are several ways to auto-pay a given bill. For example, I could auto-pay my electric bill by method #1, method #2, or method #3. If I used method #1, I could auto-pay that credit card with #2 and maybe #3.

Symbiote 6y ago

Other than shopping, I don't think I have any payments from my account that aren't auto-pay (direct debit, the other person chooses the amount). I check the bank account every 6 weeks or so, and can investigate then if necessary. It's never been necessary.

madengr 6y ago

I don't know why you are being downvoted. One has to be crazy to allow a business direct access to you primary checking account.

quickthrowman 6y ago

I auto-pay all my bills (rent, utilities, etc), but manually pay my credit cards weekly. I have auto-pay set up on CCs as a backup just in case I ever fall into a coma and can’t make a manual payment. It only auto-pays on a specific date, so you can dispute any charges prior to then.

notJim 6y ago

The hit on your credit report that can last many years if you pay late is far more of a risk than fraud, IME. I forgot to pay my credit card 6 years ago, and that has been hurting me ever since, including on my mortgage. Finally fell off just this year.

kbelder 6y ago

I think the posters touting autopay should review the 'experience of being poor-ish' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300139 I'd _never_ let any major bills pull directly from my accounts. I'm bothered just by having a recurring Netflix draw. I'm not claiming one perspective is right and the other wrong... but that my history and experiences have strongly trained me into one behavior, and yours into another.

bradgessler 6y ago

You can monitor transactions on services like Mint or Personal Capital daily or weekly. When you see a fraudulent charge, you dispute it, even if you’ve already auto-paid the balance.