Easy Bill Pay - Enhanced

[JennyH]

I can't begin to tell you of the problems I have had with EPB in the last two weeks. The short story is:
- they had a "technical problem" and a payment to a client was reversed out of the clients account, but my credit card charge remained; around $20K.
- you can't call them so I open an email exchange, where they say that they will rectify the situation
- they pay my client on Jan 30.
- they pay my client again on February 9
- they then try and charge my credit card again on February 10 (I don't keep any $ on the card unless I want to use it so it declines).
- email exchange again and they ask me to get my client to refund the double payment, which they do, reversing the payment and sending the money back to EBP.
- EPB continue to daily try and extract the $20K off my credit card despite my client refunding their double payment.
- I feel like this will never end, this is the 6th day of them continuing to try and charge my credit card in error!

 

[Cruiser Elite]

Firstly I forgot to report back - YES EBP did indeed work for me Sat as I was able to upload 2 Bills - lets just see if they do indeed process later today.

-> Jenny H - I really sympathise with you - they are certainly not the easiest to deal with - I got sick of the email non-response and contacted Fox Syme in Sydney who own EBP - 1300 361 204 - I pleaded with the lovely young lady who took my call to pass on my total disgust to Senior people up the food chain within the organisation - if enough people do this they will be forced to take action as they are part of a Publicly Listed Company - keep the pressure up

 

[NJSteve]

I can't begin to tell you of the problems I have had with EPB in the last two weeks. The short story is:
- they had a "technical problem" and a payment to a client was reversed out of the clients account, but my credit card charge remained; around $20K.
- you can't call them so I open an email exchange, where they say that they will rectify the situation
- they pay my client on Jan 30.
- they pay my client again on February 9
- they then try and charge my credit card again on February 10 (I don't keep any $ on the card unless I want to use it so it declines).
- email exchange again and they ask me to get my client to refund the double payment, which they do, reversing the payment and sending the money back to EBP.
- EPB continue to daily try and extract the $20K off my credit card despite my client refunding their double payment.
- I feel like this will never end, this is the 6th day of them continuing to try and charge my credit card in error!

Might be best to just cut ties and search for alternatives

 

[JennyH]

Thanks Cruiser Elite - I will call today.
NJSteve - As soon as I can get this mess sorted I will be closing my account and not looking back!

 

[get me outta here]

I called Fox Syme too once and they denied any assistance, a sort of, "I know nothing"

 

[Cruiser Elite]

I called Fox Syme too once and they denied any assistance, a sort of, "I know nothing"

They certainly won't assist you but you need to be firm and insist they pass up the food chain your disgust with the second rate product they are offering though one of their subsidiaries - they know they own it you just do not let them off lightly - or move on and forget them - but by going that extra yard or so we will eventually force change or they will close it down for lack of patronage.

 

[kpc]

They certainly won't assist you but you need to be firm and insist they pass up the food chain your disgust with the second rate product they are offering though one of their subsidiaries - they know they own it you just do not let them off lightly - or move on and forget them - but by going that extra yard or so we will eventually force change or they will close it down for lack of patronage.

Wow...glad I don't use them any more...didn't even have the courtesy to tell me they had suspended my acct and why!

 

[get me outta here]

I basically stopped using them some time ago. It was too unreliable.

 

[33kft]

On the topic of EBP competence: Around 9 months ago, before they enhanced it, they introduced that silly "savings account" feature and somehow I managed to deposit money in the savings account rather than the transaction account. Because it was unannounced, I didn't even know they had added it. Because I had insufficient funds in the transaction account on bill payment (despite it being in the savings account), it drew them from my card. I log in one day to see that I am in credit about $8K, and I get confused, so I walk back through everything and realise what I'd done, silly me, and that it had drawn twice from my card.

So I transfer the $8K from savings to transaction account and it credits towards the next bill (partially). I log in again later and I am still in credit $8K. What is going on, did it happen again, or did it ignore the $8K and charge the entire next bill to the card? I check my statement again, it was only the difference billed. So why do I have $8K in credit?

I'm a bit too busy at the time to do a manual reconciiation (and I just did one!) so I put it off for a while and leave the $8K there. Then, around a month later when I get the time, I reviewed the transactions on the EBP site. It looks correct from the information they display. I check credit card statements, but I see no extra amounts billed, it equals my outgoings.

Finally, a month or so later (lets call it 2.5 months from the day) I finally decide today is the day to step individually through the transactions. We are talking 300+ entries on the EBP website. I get that leaving $8K of my funds with them to collect no interest for 2+ months was not doing myself any favours but I also recognised that evidence showed that it was in my benefit and more than likely they had stuffed up. I had secretly hoped they would reconcile their own transactions and sort it out themselves. Finally as I step through the list of transactions I found the issue:

Savings account balance	$0	$0
Payment from credit card to Savings account	$8K	$8K
Transfer from Savings account to Transaction Account	-$8K	$8K

So it seems this new feature had existed for 2 and a half months without validation that transfers between the accounts would debit the transferred amount from the source account. Imagine if someone more enterprising had come across this money printing machine. I dropped them a ticket and pointed out the issue and 24 hours later it was gone without any acknowledgement. I have since audited every transaction, but deleted my account when they hiked fees.

 

[tlam]

EBP is a scam company now, avoid them at no costs. Glad I haven’t used them since they hiked the fee.

 

[Cruiser Elite]

EBP is a scam company now,

Fact or opinion?

 

[JennyH]

Thanks for everyone's help and advice.
Cruiser Elite - I did call Fox Syme, I'm not convinced I was speaking to a real receptionist, I suspect she may have been a bot? Anyway, not really any satisfaction, but maybe if it was a real person they passed my displeasure on.
"get me out of here" - thanks also, I didn't get any satisfaction, but I really appreciate your help.
The outcome was:
I received an email apologising and stating that they would cease repeatedly trying to charge my credit card.
I believed them and loaded my dragon to pay the ATO (it is BAS time)
They charged me the extra $20K!!!!!
I email them again and they say sorry I am unhappy with their service??? (I think the email might be from a bot as well).
I get my biller to cancel the EBP refund and refund to me instead (thank goodness they have been accommodating).
I have now closed my EBP account.
Lesson learned - there has to be less stressful ways of earning points

 

[Bell21]

I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties @JennyH - I don't use EBP all that much now since their price hike, but I still use it, where suits, for some occasional transactions - I have had occasional issues in the past, and they can be a bit complex to deal with as described, but I haven't encountered the sort of serious issues you just had - I just completed 2 transactions of similar size to yours without issue. The main thing I've learnt with ebp is to ignore (!!) what their 'next scheduled top-up' says until the subsequent business day in that it automatically seems to add-on a subsequent payment to the 'scheduled top up' section every time I make a transaction, which is peculiar, but then removes this incorrect top-up amount the next business day...