Wachovia, Bank of America, and Quicken Bill Pay

Just to clarify: the "Advantage" account can be more than one "account"; that is: it's your cumulative balance in all "Advantage" accounts that counts. I can't tell you all the account types that qualify, but checking and savings are both counted; I wouldn't be surprised if CD's counted, and possibly brokerage accounts.

And if you have to pay $9.95/month, you should check into Quicken Billpay.

My suggestion, use ETrade. Go on

and read up on them. They have no brick and mortar building but I consider them super. I use their Bill Pay Free. I use their ATM at local stores which do not charge a fee. I also have a local bank where I keep a few bucks in so I can use their ATM. In short you may have to change your banking practices. My wife has Bank of America for use as a savings account, again no charge. I consider Bof A to be terrible in their fee structure period (can't emphasize that enough). Perhaps at your new location it is better. Good luck. I should add that I can't justify using Quicken for Bill Pay but again perhaps you can. In Quicken I have my credit card accounts which I post to when charging and reconcile when I get their paper statement.

I use Bank of America but pay the bills directly through their website. I use Quicken 07 but it's just easier for me to use their site. I then download all of the data into Quicken every night.

I too was a Wachovia customer in NJ but when I moved up to NH, I closed the accounts. There isn't any way to remain a customer and not pay the ATM charges when using other banks. The up side of BofA is that they are all over the place so getting to their ATM's is easy.

"Do any BofA customers pay their bills thru Quicken without having to pay this monthly fee, and without maintaining such a high balance in the "Advantage" account? If so, what do I need to do to do this, as well?"

Even if others do have free bill payment initiated from Quicken, they may have grandfather clauses in their agreement with Bank of America (formerly Nations Bank and others). These would not apply to you.

Bank of America's web bill pay is very robust. You can receive statements electronically much like Quicken's WEB Billpay service for free. However the one advantage to Quicken's Web Billpay is that you can issue payments from multiple accounts - in my case four bank accounts, two credit union accounts, one brokerage account (with check writing prevedilages) and even my HELOC. No need for me to log into multiple sites to issue payments. Quicken's Web Billpay does download payments immediately after entered, while Bank of America's Web is not a timely - I believe it is when the payment is sent.

My primary account is with E-Trade Bank and I have a high enough balance (include brokerage) that they waive my ATM fees. However, they do have agreements to use other ATMS without a fee (in my area Target stores and a Chevron station). I use a local institution to make deposits (it takes up to a week for E-Trade to post by mail) and transfer the money electronically through Quicken Web Billpay. I only have a deposit every month or two usually for very small checks. For E-Trade, Express Web Connect does not work very well with Quicken 2008. Very difficult in setting up and it will generally stop downloading at some point.

Oilcan

-----Original Message----- From: BRH [mailto:BRH] Posted At: Friday, May 23, 2008 11:16 AM Posted To: alt.comp.software.financial.quicken Conversation: Wachovia, Bank of America, and Quicken Bill Pay Subject: Wachovia, Bank of America, and Quicken Bill Pay

I presently bank at Wachovia and have been using Quicken to pay bills electronically for the past few years at no monthly charge. However, because I'll soon my relocating to upstate NY, and there'll be no Wachovia branch within probably 150 miles, I have to change to another bank. For better or worse, I chose Bank of America, and have already opened a checking and savings account with them.

Unfortunately, when trying to set-up Quicken 2006 to pay bills and reconcile accounts etc thru BofA, I got an error. When I called BofA for help, I learned that although electronic BillPay thru BofA's website

is free, BofA charges $9.95/month to link this thru Quicken. According to the rep the monthly charge can only be waived if I open and

"Advantage" account and maintain a minum balance of $15K in it.

My questions are:

1. Do any BofA customers pay their bills thru Quicken without having to

pay this monthly fee, and without maintaining such a high balance in the

"Advantage" account? If so, what do I need to do to do this, as well?

1. If I can't pay bills electronically for free with BofA, does anyone have any practical suggestions to continue banking with Wachovia, and having access to an ATM without having one of their branches nearby?

I use ATM's frequently, and really hate paying bank fees (obviously). I'd like to continue having my $$$ available to me thru local ATM's, and

also pay bills emectronically thru Quicken with no fee. For the past few years, I've had my cake and eaten it too, and would like this to continue somehow.

Thanks!

Try HSBC....

Can you clarify how to download your data (paid bills, etc) into Quicken? Since I've always input my payment data directly into Quicken which seamlessly interfaced with Wachovia, I'm not sure how one would download any data to Quicken from BofA's website after the data is input there. Is this done thru One-Step Update?

That's exactly why I chose BofA when I realized that Wachovia doesn't have any nearby branches to where I'm moving.

One option that I'm considering is to keep my Wachovia accounts active, continue to pay bills thru Wachovia/Quicken, and just deposit $xxx/month (via written Wachovia check) into my BofA account so that I have quick access to cash via BofA's ATMs. Does anyone see any drawbacks to that approach?

Thanks to all for their input so far.

Yes. Use the One-step Update. If you have already entered the data into Quicken then you will need to match each transaction downloaded with an existing one. If it has not been entered then you just accept the transaction.

The actual mechanism for downloading (direct connect vs web connect) depends on your actual BoA branch.

That should work. Setup money transfers bwt your Wachovia and BoA accounts to make your life a little easier. Some stores only take local checks so you might also get checks from your BoA account.

Thanks for the positive reinforcement, JM!

If you like Wachovia, why not continue to use them for electronic banking?

When we moved from CA to WA, we kept our Citibank account because I liked the Quicken interface. We continue to use Citibank for all our bill paying, deposits, etc. We do have another checking account at a local bank, which we use for writing checks. But almost everything we pay is done electronically, so the combination works fine for us.

While I don't think Citibank has a physical branch closer than California, they do have a shared ATM network. There is an ATM at another local bank that we can use for cash withdrawals with no ATM fee. It looks like there is at least one ATM available in every city around us.

Guy

Guy Scharf wrote in news:Xns9AA854962BD4Dguyspamcopnet@

216.196.97.142:

Citibank had no real branches in NJ when we moved from LI to North Jersey. I did the same as Guy did, and added an account at the local bank next to the train station. Now Citibank has machines in Seven/Eleven stores, so the problem of getting cash from that account is almost eliminated. I believe that this should work in any 7/11 store, but only know for sure in NJ and MA.