Companies holding your banking information

[Gsxrboy]

I have read many articles and I have experienced this myself a long time ago. Never ever, give your banking information or credit card information to a company to automatically withdrawal money from your account. It is very easy for them to take out way more than what is necessary and it takes a very long time to get the money back. My experience was with Rogers, they had access to my savings account, everything was fine for the first 3 months, then all of a sudden they took out over $400 without warning. Things bounced and I incurred service charges. I called and they realized that they made a mistake, it took them over 3 weeks to get the money back into my account, I quickly told them to remove my information, and to send me a bill.

Here is one example:

http://www.mississauga.com/news/arti...bill-a-shocker

[Zonny]

I don't think these things happen all that often, but I also don't think there's too many ways to avoid it, short of paying everything in cash.

10 years ago or so, I remember paying my power bill via cheque. I didn't have enough to pay the whole amount, so I paid, say, $50 (can't remember the exact amount). The cheque was cashed for the full amount of the bill (more than twice the amount I sent), and caused my rent cheque to bounce. Apparently the folks at the power company coded it wrong, so it was cashed incorrectly. Not sure if that can still happen.

It certainly didn't take weeks to settle though. Especially if it's going to your credit card, I think that can be settled very quickly.

Another error we had awhile back, we have a lease on our furnace and water heater. We purchase our oil from the same company (we're required to do so because of the terms of the lease). So we had the lease payments going to our Visa on the day they were due, but the oil was only paid after a certain date, - payments processed after the 10th go on next month's bill, so we always paid that after the 10th. But twice, they took the oil amount at the same time as the lease amounts. So we had them remove our CC info, and now we call with our CC number when we want to pay.

[ashedfc]

Same info: hence deleted

[MortgageQueen]

I totally agree with gsxrboy. (by the way, good choice in bike)

Another note on Rogers. I have found with many of my clients; when I pull credit bureaus before getting them a mortgage, Rogers is one of the TOP company's to report late payments. Just a warning for everyone who has an account with them. They can really screw(like a day late) up your credit rating.

[lekate]

I totally agree with gsxrboy. (by the way, good choice in bike)

Another note on Rogers. I have found with many of my clients; when I pull credit bureaus before getting them a mortgage, Rogers is one of the TOP company's to report late payments. Just a warning for everyone who has an account with them. They can really screw(like a day late) up your credit rating.

I found Rogers awful for taking my payments on time. I also tried to set up my MC for automatic payments and they failed three times to do this. Ugh. Personally I'll take the risks for authorized payments. Just check to make sure they take the right payments monthly.