Complaint Review: Paytrust

I was a Paytrust customer for over nine years.  I signed up for it originally because my mother-in-law had pancreatic cancer, and my wife was naturally distracted and upset about it.  To pay the bills, I would first have to search the house to find where the bills had been stuffed away in various drawers and letter racks and stacks.  So I signed up for Paytrust to try to take more of the burden of running the household finances.  There weren't too many services like that in 2000, and Paytrust was supposed to be the best.

After her mother passed away, her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer too, and so I kept on with Paytrust.  After he passed away, we continued on with Paytrust for another five years, out of inertia really.

So if you are in a situation like we were in, maybe Paytrust is for you.  Otherwise, think twice.

The downside of Paytrust, as I learned over time, is that many billers simply don't want to send their bills to some post office box in South Dakota, where the bill is scanned.  So you continue to get those paper bills.  Also, many billers change their billing addresses fairly often, chasing the lowest costs; and you will need to frequently go into the Paytrust payee page to verify or update the biller's payment address.  That takes time.  Further, not many billers ultimately had electronic billing arrangements with Paytrust, so that wasn't that useful. 

I found out about Paytrust's fee policies recently, when I was phasing out Suntrust, the bank I originally had when I signed up for Paytrust, and doing most of my bill paying through my credit union.  Last month my Paytrust fee was presented by ACH to my Suntrust bank account, and since we had essentially stopped using it in order to switch to my credit union, the 10.95 payment was rejected for insufficient funds. Paytrust's bill collection operation, Metavante, opted to continue to present the ACH transaction for 10.95 three times over a week and a half span.  (This all happened while we were out of town on vacation.) Each time they did it, the bank charged us an NSF fee of $36.00. The accumulated NSF fees essentially wiped out a deposit that I had made in that account which would have covered the 10.95 fee many times over. And the NSF fees by wiping out the account balance caused us further penalties from bank.  Meanwhile, on its end, Paytrust itself charged a $20 fee for each time they tried to present the $10.95 bill.  So I got hit with fees and penalties on both sides of the transaction.

Paytrust got its 10.95 fee paid when we got back from vacation. But I am going to be out of pocket at least $220.00 from this, counting the fees and penalties on all sides of the transaction, and I'm not sure if that is the extent of the negative consequences for me.   All because of a $10.95 bill from Paytrust, a business that is supposed to be helping us manage our finances.  

So think twice or three times, before giving an outfit like Paytrust the authorization to present electronic checks in your name against your bank account.  They have an adverse interest to you when it comes to getting their own monthly fees paid.  Their system is set up to keep presenting those electronic checks automatically three times over a relatively short time.  By doing that, they generate additional fees for themselves that they arbitrarily establish, and they will not waive those fees. 

In my case, the "Smart Balance" feature was enabled, which meant that Paytrust had access to my bank account balance.  So they knew, or should have known, when they were presenting electronic checks to themselves in my name, that there were insufficient funds. 

Finally, although their website help pages say that if you cancel, Paytrust will contact all your billers to change your billing address back to your residence, their customer rep told me today that that is no longer true.  If you have to cancel the account, you have to do all the mailing chores yourself.

My bottom line recommendation is don't use Paytrust, use a bank or credit union that offers free online bill paying services.  Instead of paying fees to Paytrust, buy yourself something like a Fujitsu Scansnap scanner, which can automatically do double-sided scans to pdf, and scan your own bills.