I love auto bill pay, where the customer sets up for the bank to automatically mail a check each month to arrive on or before the payment due date. I stress to customers that unlike other bills with phony fees and taxes, our bill is exactly the same each month so they can use auto bill pay. We often get an envelope full of these checks, they always scan correctly, and they seem never to bounce (I think the bank deducts them from the customer’s account before mailing them). I know some of the folks here don’t like processing them, but I just don’t understand that, it’s minimal work.
This method saves the customer a stamp, and given our rural area, a customer mailing a check by putting it out for the mail carrier involves lots of risks. Like soaked by rain, chewed by mice, or lost somewhere between their mailbox and the post office. We did for awhile have ACH indirectly through a third party payment portal, and I was surprised to discover exactly what you described, I did not realize an ACH payment could bounce just like a check. It is always the problem customers who want special payment methods. I reluctantly set up payment via PayPal for one problem customer to pay, and I guess if PayPal accepts ACH that would be a way to accept ACH. I assume though if the ACH payment bounced, Paypal would claw back the money from you. Or maybe delay availability to make sure it cleared. I hate the Paypal method anyway because we have to finagle the payment manually in our billing system and then either get a check periodically from Paypal or use it to buy stuff on eBay. Unfortunately, no one seems to understand budgeting anymore, except the seniors on Social Security. They want to see how long it takes for their Internet to be turned off, then look in the couch cushions for change or see if they have any gift cards with money on them. But somehow when you go to their house to repo the radio, the power is on, their cellphone works, they have food on the table and gas in the car. Internet is at the top of life’s necessities, except when it comes to paying bills. I always wonder at the lines in front of the RedBox kiosks. Who pays $1 to rent a movie when you can get a Netflix subscription? I assume it’s the pay-as-you-go economy. You go to the grocery store, and at the end if you have a dollar bill in your pocket, you rent a movie. If not, no movie. It’s too hard to know if you can afford $9 each and every month. And if your job is driving for Uber, maybe I can understand how you just can’t plan your income. From: Jeremy Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2015 10:41 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Steer customers to ACH (vs CC)? I originally loved ACH, for the cost savings. Now I have realized that it is the only way that a customer can defraud us with our current billing method. They login and run an ACH on a delinquent account, get it turned back on automagically, and then it bounces, we add a fee, they repeat the process, we turn it off, add another fee, rinse, lather, repeat. Finally we give up and go get the equipment and now we're out like $250. Being a prepaid service we usually shut them off after 20 days and so that would be the most that anyone could possibly hit us for (20 days of service). With checks they can bounce the install and then play the re-activation game for two months before we get frustrated and pull out. We have yet to start sending customers to collections. For those of you that are, how does it work out? Are the reclamation of these minor amounts worth the slanderous hate speech that is sure to come from that customer for life after you hit their credit? We have been eating the cost, cutting ties, and moving on. As far as how we push them toward ACH, I simply explain how bad bill pay sucks. It is like sending cash in the mail and it goes through a third party. If they are late mailing it then service gets shut off, and late fees get added. I also tell them that credit cards cost us more to process than checks. I basically just tell them that we prefer ACH, but we will take anything. I regularly question whether ACH is a good idea or not. We have more problem customers on ACH than any other payment method. On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote: Our bank wants a $25/mo minimum fee for us to process ACH payments, so we don’t accept ACH. The per transaction fee is not bad, but the minimum is a problem. From: Justin Wilson - MTIN Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2015 9:29 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Steer customers to ACH (vs CC)? Give them a discount. Much of it depends on the bank. We had folks who absolutely hated ACH because their bank would charge an overdraft if the ACH failed. They like the CC, even if it was a debit card, because if the money wasn’t there it just declines it. No $30 fee or whatever. But, it depends on the bank. This is what wasn’t attractive to us was banks treated it different. Credit card either runs or it doesn’t. ACH typically is not as smooth for a variety of reasons. Justin Wilson [email protected] --- http://www.mtin.net Owner/CEO xISP Solutions- Consulting – Data Centers - Bandwidth http://www.midwest-ix.com COO/Chairman Internet Exchange - Peering - Distributed Fabric On Nov 11, 2015, at 10:21 AM, Christopher Gray <[email protected]> wrote: For the people who accept both ACH and CC payments, do you do anything to promote the use of ACH (to reduce your costs)? Thanks - Chris
