First Internet Bank of Indiana (FIB) & Presidential bill pay changes: Endorsement lost

I have been a long time customer and cheerleader of First Internet Bank of Indiana. I always beleved their slightly lower rates were more than ofset by their excellent billpay terms and customer service. Well, the recent update to the bill pay system has led me to retract those endorsements. Here are the problems with the new bill pay:

1) No way to edit a pending payment. You must delete the payment and reenter.
2) No way to delete an e-bill. You must pay it for it to be deleted. Even paying it and then cancelling the payment does not make it go away. [Edit: you can detlete it as per my post below, but it is much more difficult than it used to be]
3) The system no longer automatically adjusts the payment date to land on a business day. Instead it shows an error that you must go back and fix. With so many credit cards setting a sunday due date, this is a pain.
4) Very difficult to pay anything other than the minimum due of an e-bill. The old system at least showed you the full balance of an e-bill while you typed it in. The new system only shows the full amount due in a popup window which is hidden when you start typing the payment amount. Other banks give you the option of paying the minimum, full balance, or other.
5) Using firefox gives you a security warning that probably is not accurate.
6) The nickname for a bill does not show up in the pending payments section or in the list of bills when you are trying to edit information. If you have several credit cards at citibank or MBNA for example, you can only tell them apart by the last four digits. As AMEX aparently uses the same last four numbers for all accounts, there is absolutly no way to tell these apart.

I have communicated these problems to First IB and will give them a few months to tweak the system. However, I will be looking for a new "go to" bank if most of these are not fixed.

I know presidential uses the same bill pay system, do people who bank there have the same problem?

Edited to include Presidential Bankin the title since this appears to apply to presidential bank as well

Thanks for this list longwood8. I've only had to pay 2 bills since the conversion this past week, and haven't noticed these issues.

I'm suprised that these would be a deal-breaker for you, given how much else FIBI excells at. It seems like your suggestions could easily be addressed, and they are offset by the quicker payment time, as CornHusker mentions.

What do others think of the new interface?

Double post

I agreed with Longwood8, now their billpay are much worser than before

longwood8 said: My billpay is a fairly regular routine: I get a bill, then I set up the billpayment for the full balance to be paid on the due date. Paying bills quicker is of no advantage to me since I set up the bill pay weeks in advance. If I need a quick payment a credit card company can usually pull the money faster. So there is no advantage to the new system for me, only the disadvantages listed above.

The simple act of paying a bill in full, the one thing I do most at an online bank, has gone from fairly easy to a big pain. That is reason to switch.

I absolutely agree. The new bill pay service is a chaos.

What is an advantage of using this billpay vs. MBNA's billpay?

I recieved an email from first ib about the problems. they showed me how to delete an ebill (it is much more difficult than before and requires numerous clicks, and given the number of $0 ebills I recieve this will be a big pain)

No other problems were addressed.

I will probably be moving back to pcbanker. Anyone have any thoughts on their bill pay?

So how do you do it? I've got the sae problem with ebills I want to delete.

TIA
B
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longwood8 said: I recieved an email from first ib about the problems. they showed me how to delete an ebill (it is much more difficult than before and requires numerous clicks, and given the number of $0 ebills I recieve this will be a big pain)

No other problems were addressed.

I will probably be moving back to pcbanker. Anyone have any thoughts on their bill pay?

longwood8, I used pcbanker as my primary account for a couple years before moving to BofI, then FirstIB. So my pcbanker experience is fairly extensive, though a bit out of date. I closed my pcbanker account in 2002.

-I didn't care for pcbanker's ACH in after they changed it in 2002. Even though it pulled money from external accounts immediately, the funds weren't available for 4 business days.

-Customer service also wasn't as good as FirstIB. I've had a few minor screwups with FirstIB, but always found it pretty easy to get to the bottom of them.

-PCbanker's billpay was neither poor nor especially good. I liked FirstIB's better. I don't have the sharp aversion to the new FirstIB system that you do, but admittedly I haven't used it much.


I've had ebills accumulating for a long time with FirstIB that I've paid other ways, and have just ignored them.

btbrors said: Another option would be to ditch the American Express cards altogether and open a credit card with First IB; then you could pay it by doing a real-time funds transfer.
Was that a verbatim quote?

I just realized I will have the same propblem, only worse: I have THREE AMEX cards that end in the same four digits. (AMEX must do this on purpose)

I have decided to move to pcbanker. I was there previously and found it fine, I went to FIB because back then FIB had better bill pay. pcbanker now has the old FIB bill pay which we know is much better.

I encourage everyone to keep pestering FIB until they right this wrong.

A note about the comments above regarding a lack of nicknames when you have multiple accounts with teh same company. The "fix" noted above by first IB only applies to the left side of the window where your payees are shown. The nickname does NOT show up in the Pending payments or payment history section. this is bad if you, like me, have more than one MBNA or citi card. You can not be sure which card has a pending payment unless you now the last four digits.

The last email I recieved from FirstIB stated they were working to fix the problem of how you can not edit pending payments. They were silent as to the other problems.

I incourage everyone who banks there to keep complaining about all the problems above.