On Mon, 31 May 2004 09:14:04 -0400, "Microsoft News"
<pengel[at]source-imaging.com> wrote:

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America) which is free and works flawlessly.


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experiences using the 'free' MSN Bill Pay included in M03 Deluxe. Then
I switched to my bank's bill pay.

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- e-Bill delivery caused a few headaches, in particular with Verizon.
Verizon's e-billing system is less than robust. Other's e-bills all
worked fine.
- I could never find out if my bank supported two bill payers -- MSN
Bill Pay and my bank -- as the same time. So I just stuck with MSN
until it ran out (went from 'free' to 'time to pay up').
- e-bills didn't seem to integrate cleanly with Money, ... reply back if
you want more details.
Granted here e-bills are a bit above and beyond plain-vanilla bill-pay.

On the positive side, MSN Bill Pay had a few seemingly simple features
that are better than my bank's, (but I'm not willing to cough-up 7.95 a
month for): When you pay someone who is not setup for electronic
delivery of payments, such as your local dentist, MSN Bill Pay cuts and
mails a check against my account at my bank, and that paper check gets
returned in my monthly bank statements. But, when my bank does this, I
don't get a paper check returned, I just get a line in my statement
saying 'bill pay payment to ...'

A real positive is also the transfer feature included in MSN Bill Pay.
You can transfer funds from any FI any other FI once you have these FI's
setuo in Money.


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Did a little research, and was pleasantly surprised to find out the info
'transferred' -- not all at once, the first time you send a payment to a
payee, if the payee isn't already setup, then all the information is
transacted the first time, (it's all invisible to you). The OFX
transaction model supports this, and I was impressed to see it work.

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the auto-pays. Your new payor will need to know to start them. I'm not
100% certain, but this may be as simple as changing the financial
instution from where the bill is paid in Money's B&D. You can always
log in to a FI's website and see what is setup/scheduled after you try
this change, just time the change so you have room to cancel a payment
that may be setup to happen from both accounts?

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directly via secure email from within Money.

By the way, MSN Bill Pay is actually done by Checkfree (I think MS now
owns CF). But you'll never see their name, except 'powered by
Checkfree' on a few webpages.



Microsoft News wrote:
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I have been using Money since version 1. I started paying bills on-line as
soon as that feature was part of the package. I've been on Checkfree since.
Now I would like to take advantage of the special offer w/ Money 2004 and
the lower rate on an ongoing basis...but I want to test the waters here and
ask a few questions:

- Has anyone had a bad experience making this change?

- Has anyone had either good or bad experiences using the MSN bil-pay
service?

Now for the tough questions.

- I have several auto-pays and a long list of vendors I pay through Money.
When I make the change, will all of my existing data associated w/ my
vendors "move" to MSN or will I have to set them all up again?

- Will I have to kill all of my Auto-pays, then set them up again under the
new service?


- Is there a phone number for the MSN bill pay service where someone can
walk me through these issues? I can't find anything at the web site w/
contacts...either email or phone.

Thanks,
Paul