Experts spoke about the risks of autopayment for housing and communal services: how to protect yourself

The convenience of connecting automatic payments for housing and communal services seems to be an undeniable blessing. You don’t have to worry about missing another payment and creating a debt. However, there are pitfalls in using this option. “MK” spoke with experts about the risks of a situation where money is debited from you automatically, and how to protect yourself from them.

A Telegram channel dedicated to housing and communal services issues found out that a very small proportion of its Muscovite subscribers – 8% – have activated automatic payment, that is, in other words, they trust this system. The author of these lines is among them. I think this option is very convenient – it’s written off by itself, and my head doesn’t hurt about anything. At the same time, sometimes I still check that the amount does not go beyond the monthly average.

But 76% of subscribers chose the opposite answer: “No, autopayment is not enabled, I don’t trust it.” An entire district of Moscow, or rather its public, could not resist leaving a warning in the discussions: “You should not trust auto payment! Sometimes we receive debt payments for cold water supply, which we pay according to metering devices and we do not have to pay more than the indicators you provided. But autopay pays for that too.”

We found out from an expert whether this option should be trusted.

“It’s one thing if we connect automatic payment for telephone or other services where there is a certain tariff, in this case everything is more or less clear,” says Pavel Stepura, who has been dealing with housing and communal services for more than 20 years. – As for housing and communal services (housing and communal services), then, in my opinion, connecting automatic payment here is possible only with full trust in the accrual system. The risk here is that there may be failures in payments for housing and communal services, especially through payment centers.

For example, if you are overdue for verification of your water meter, you will not notice this immediately (the circumstances may be different) – in the first three months you will be charged according to average indicators, and you will not see the difference in your monthly amount, but after three months, since you have not carried out verification, you will be given a standard with an increasing coefficient for Moscow of 3. And you will have an accrual for the “water” line approximately ten times more than usual. You would see this on the receipt and could go figure it out before paying, and if autopayment is enabled, then this large amount will be debited automatically, and you may not even notice it if, for example, you are on vacation, there was no connection, etc. .d. (and there was enough money on the card to write it off). This is a common everyday situation. I myself have never activated automatic payment and do not plan to. I always check the charges first and only then pay myself.

This is one risk, and there may also be a situation of erroneous accrual, when someone else’s amount was credited to you. For example, someone’s debts appeared in the database, and you were mistakenly charged, for example, twice the amount. And again it is written off automatically.

The expert emphasized that he is not against autopayment, but if you connect it, you need to look, track what amounts are billed, and look at it line by line. And we must remember that if there is a failure or an erroneous accrual, the excess amount debited from you will not be returned to the card, since according to the law, such overpayments, as a rule, count towards future payments.

“The saddest situation is when, for example, you are on vacation, and you have been charged twice as much for housing and communal services, and the money on your card has decreased,” says Pavel Stepura. – When you return, of course, they will recalculate you, etc., but the fact is that since the money has already been distributed to different providers of housing and communal services, it will not be returned to you, although it will not be lost: consider that you paid in advance. And paying several months in advance at once is not the most rational use of your personal budget.

Meanwhile, energy companies are speaking out in defense of auto payments. Its obvious conveniences are saving time, the absence of unnecessary administration, reducing the likelihood of an increase in overdue payments and an increase in receivables.