I would like to know the percentage of individuals in the Remote area of Warner Robins that actually use the online services to pay bills. Let me ask you a question..

If you had to chose an online payment method, would you rather be able to do it directly from your bank, rather than a third party payment service like most of your online billers have to offer? Lets weight the facts here for just a moment so that our eyes are open to something very important that most using these online services do not understand. Especially here in Warner Robins.

Recently, my bank here in Warner Robins started a wonderful online service for Bill payment , allowing individuals to pay directly from their accounts. This is much better than using any of the online services that most biller's have available and more secure too.

Billers such as the City of Warner Robins, Flint Electric, and Bellsouth all have their own online services for individuals to pay their bills online. But, they do not want to comply with the banks that are establishing a more direct and secure way for their customers to pay bills online.

For example, most of your online services offered by our local billers such as Flint Electric have a flaw. If an individual tries to pay their bill from their own more secure bank site, rather than using the Flint site, the payment is actually mailed by check payment. This completely defeats the idea of online payments and in alot of cases payments take up to two working days to be payed, resulting in late payment charges for the customer. They have to work together.

The important difference in using your bank's online site rather than your biller's online site is security and no one else has your banking and account information that you have placed in the billers site. And also, you have complete control and access. And no fear of someone else from one of these online bill paying sites going into your account anytime they want to get a payment. This is not a good system at all and many are using it anyway.

It is unfortunate for many who have opened their banking accounts to the credit card companies also, by allowing all their banking account information to be made known. Giving the credit card companies access to your account. Not a good thing, especially when one takes into consideration of how just recently millions of veteran's personal information was stolen. And then was not reported over a period of time. It is obvious that this type if illegal activity is taking place now more and more. Not to mention all the online scams taking place.

The online services now that the Banks are offering are alot better and the customer has complete control on what goes in and what comes out. It is you the customer that clicks pay bill.... and not the biller that is clicking pay bill for you.

The basic problem is what is called third party handling that is allowed by most of your online sites available. And they are not wanting to work with independent online services as well as they should.

I do hope that the City of Warner Robins, Flint Electric, and Bellsouth will come to a productive working agreement in regards to this problem that is now occuring.

It is unfortunate that many working in these offices are not as computer literate as they should be either. And 80% of the general public use the computer for getting e-mail and browsing the web, which is the extent of their computer knowledge.

The computer is a wonderful tool and a wonderful tool only. And it is in great hopes that many begin now to learn how to use this tool of advanced communication more effectively in their lives. Online Bill payment can be a wonderful thing and the public needs to be more educated as to how it works and how it does not work to make it a success for all to use.

Come on Warner Robins...get on the Ball!