One of the latest methods of paying regularly-occurring monthly bills is through automatic withdrawal, either from one's checking account or via credit card. Nearly everyone, from the mortgage company to the utility company to the phone company wants you to sign up for automatic payment.

This is very beneficial to the payee as they can cut billing costs. It can also nearly guarantee their payment, on-time, from a large number of their customers. This kind of regularity allows them a better credit score and happier stock holders as they can show a projected' cash flow that is nearly guaranteed to come in as scheduled. The whole arrangement implies that you can trust them, but they can't trust YOU. As a consumer, I resent the one-sidedness of the equation, and I have plenty of reason to believe I shouldn't trust them, either.

I do not trust any company to take money from my account without one-the-spot approval by me, for several very solid reasons. Those reasons all consist of times companies took money from my account either early or double-billed me. And I have reason to believe these times were not accidents'.

Utility companies are some of the worse offenders when it comes to automatic withdrawal. I read an article a few years ago about the large numbers of erroneous utility billings people were experiencing. The conclusion the researcher came to was that these were too systematic and too widespread to actually be mistakes'. Her conclusion was that, as the payments were deducted automatically and many people did not get a paper bill a large percentage of them monthly didn't realize they were being cheated. Her research showed cell phone companies to be nearly as bad about erroneous billings. Of course, once they have your money, the fight to get your account credited back is almost impossible.

In my area of Michigan the utility company (yes, there is only one) has a habit of estimating everyone's bill for either the month of December or the month of January-and they estimate' it extremely high. Anyone with automated billing pays that huge amount they don't owe, and is credited the overage back the following month. If you don't actually write the check, you likely will not know this . . . until an extra $50 or $75 disappears from your checking or credit card account-right around the holidays when you are most likely to run short. Luckily, our Public Service Commission publicly clipped their wings by requiring them to actually read each meter

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