Well recently I've been reading about fraudulent home foreclosure scams; which brought to mind a voice mail that one of our employees was left over night a few weeks back. A very slick and fast talking individual had left someone a message about trying to help them with their mortgage payments.

They even mentioned that this was their last courtesy call he would be making, funny since it was the first one he had made. The caller even left a phone number and was very polite and left you with a sense of urgency to call. The individual who received the message thought perhaps it was meant for someone else and not them as they had not tried to contact anyone about such a service.

Well there were a few things that were clues as to how we were able to determine that the call was a scam. The first thing that jumped out to us was that the caller was very free with giving his name (first name only) but never said the name of his supposed customer; so essentially that message could have been for anyone.

Clue number two was that we had never heard from this company or individual before. Typically your last courtesy call is not the first call. The receiver of the message also had not been seeking this service either.

The last and tale-tale sign was when the caller left his phone number. No it was a 555 number or anything like that; chances are the phone number was a legitimate number. If you called it I’m sure they would answer and be extremely polite and offer to work wonders for you. I decided to use the power of the internet. I did a quick search by entering in the phone number and I got a flood of results that had, shall we say a negative tone and the term scam was virtually synonymous with this phone number. I’m of the school of thought that it’s much better to learn from the mistakes of other versus having to make your own mistakes to learn.

That was all the proof we needed to come to the conclusion that the call was indeed a scam. Perhaps this will help you determine if a caller is indeed a scammer the next time you have a question.
 

Start saving today.  PBK Bank offers a Get Away Club Savings Account also known as a vacation club account.  The account starts in April and transfers an amount of $10, $20, or $50 dollars a week from your checking account.  This transfer will come out every Friday for 50 weeks.  (Example: if you have a $10 account, at the end you will have $500 plus interest)  After 50 weeks you will be credited interest and a check will be mailed to you in mid April to early May.  Then its bon-voyage!  It’s that simple.  Come in and see a customer service representative today and we will get you started.
 

There were some new rules that went into place this past Monday (February 22, 2010) put in place by the Federal Reserve that means some changes for credit card companies and new protections for consumers. I’m going to resist the compliance person in me and not get to technical or to into the details but I’m going to try to give a brief overview of some changes that were made.

• Before your credit card company can increase your rate and/or certain fees, or other significant changes to the terms they must send you a notice 45 days before doing so.
• Now your monthly credit card bill should include information detailing how long it would take to pay off your balance if you only make your minimum payment.
• Credit card companies will not be able to increase your rate for the first 12 months.
• If the rate on your card is increased, it can only apply to new charges.
• If you want to be able to make transactions that take you over you limit (this generally generates additional charges and/or higher interest rates) you must first notify your credit card company that you want to allow these transactions; otherwise you will be denied.
• If you are required to pay fees to your credit card company, those fees cannot total more than 25% of the initial credit limit.
• If you are under age 21, you will need to show that you are capable of making the payments, or you will need a cosigner to get a credit card.
• Credit card companies must mail or deliver your bill at least 21 days before it’s due. Also your payment cut-off time cannot be earlier than 5 p.m. on the due date.
• If you make more than the minimum payment, they must apply the excess amount to the balance with the highest interest rate. (There are exceptions to this rule.)
• Credit card companies can only impose interest charges on balances in the current billing cycle.

Keep in mind this is a brief overview as the actual rules are much more detailed. To find out more about the changes you should check the Federal Reserve’s website.
 

Over this past few weeks we’ve looked at various ways that Bill Pay can help you save money, time and help monitor you’re spending. Believe it or not those aren’t even the best benefit of using Bill Pay.

The best part about Bill Pay is that, ok come close I don’t want you to miss this one, it’s ummm FREE! That’s right; this amazing service that can bring you some many benefits and conveniences is absolutely free. The only thing that has cost associated with it is the Expedited Funds and those costs are clearly labeled so you shouldn’t mistakenly use it with out knowing it.

So if you’ve not yet already signed up for Internet Banking and Bill Pay what are you waiting for? Stop wasting money and time and get a handle on your spending and sign up today for this amazing and FREE service!
 

The last two weeks we’ve looked at ways that Bill Pay can save you both money and time. This week we are going to look at how Bill Pay can help you monitor your spending. By knowing what you are spending your money on you might be able to find ways to save a few bucks. 

One way that Bill Pay helps you monitor your spending is that you can have it set to email you each time you make a payment. I’ve found that sometimes I make a bill payment when I don’t have my check register with me and this is a great reminder for me to actually deduct it from my check book.

Also when you set-up your payees you can actually assign them to categories. These categories can be used to help track what areas you are spending your money in. You can also pull various reports through Bill Pay to show you who and what you’ve paid. This can be a great tool for reevaluating your spending habits.

So you can look at Bill Pay like some type of mini budget tracker/financial guide.
 

Last week we took a look at how Bill Pay can help save you money and this week we are going to look at how Bill Pay can help save you some time and who couldn’t use more time.

After the initial set-up of your payees, Bill Pay becomes extremely quick and easy to use. Here is a question for you if you are not using Bill Pay. How long would you estimate that it takes you to pay all of your bills each month from start to finish? That would include writing the check, filling out the slip to send back with your payment, and putting it all in the envelope, then stamping and address the envelope, deducting from your checkbook, and then mailing the payment off? I’m going to guess that this takes a bit of time and that you may even have to specifically set time aside to sit down at the desk or table to knock them all out. By using Bill Pay I can easily pay all of my bills in less than 5 minutes, its that easy.

It could be possible to not even have to touch Bill Pay after some initial setup to pay all of your bills. With Bill Pay you can set-up automatic payments to where the bills are paid automatically. This works well if you have a bill that is the same every month. If you have a payee that can be set up for you to get your bill from them automatically through Bill Pay, you can even setup criteria that can approve and pay those bills as well with out you having to touch a thing. If the bill falls outside of your approval criteria then you’ll be notified via email that your attention is needed with the bill.

I think it’s clear that Bill Pay can really save you some time and after all time is money.
 

This is the start of our latest series on Bill Pay. In this series we are going to take a look at various reasons why one might want to sign up for Bill Pay. The first reason why you should sign up for Bill Pay is that it can help you save money.

I know paying your bills and saving money don’t always go hand in hand but in this case they do. With bill pay you will not have to purchase stamps to send out your bills any more, and you won’t have to worry about the price of gas when you have to run to the post office to drop your bills in the mail.

Bill Pay can potentially help you avoid late fees as well. Things come up and it’s easy to forget a bill, after all who wants to think about having to pay them. With bill pay you can schedule payments in advance. So for example I got my bill today but it’s not due for another 2 and half weeks. Well I can go in today and set that bill to come out two weeks from now. If you have a bill like a house or car payment that is the same each month, you can set it up to go out at a specified time each month. You might not get anything on these types of payments in the mail until after you are late.

Say you’ve forgot to send out a payment and you noticed that it’s due tomorrow. Well typically Bill Pay needs a few more days that that to get the payment to its destination, but with a new featured called expedited funds you can be assured that your payment will arrive next day. Something to note, is that there is a cost for the use of expedited funds and most but not all payees can be paid with expedited funds. Even though there is a cost for the use of expedited funds, often times the cost is much less than the cost of a late fee.

These are a few ways that Bill Pay can help you save money.
 

One of the main objectives of this blog is to help educate our customers. I recently came across a great site for some financial education which I had forgotten about, and thought it would be a great thing to share with our customers on our blog.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) launched something they call “Money Smart” back in 2001; which is designed to provide financial education for individuals who are outside of the financial industry. The program can help you develop financial skills and positive banking relationships.

The education is pretty flexible and it’s at your own pace. They have sections for young adults and even a portable audio version. Best of all, it’s a free service they provide. The program consists of 10 training modules:

• Bank On It (an introduction to bank services)
• Borrowing Basics (an introduction to credit)
• Check It Out (how to choose and keep a checking account)
• Money Matters (how to keep track of your money)
• Pay Yourself First (why you should save, save, save)
• Keep It Safe (your rights as a consumer)
• To Your Credit (how your credit history will affect your credit future)
• Charge It Right (how to make a credit card work for you)
• Loan To Own (know what you’re borrowing before you buy)
• Your Own Home (what home ownership is all about)

So what are you waiting for? Get started on Money Smart, because knowing more about credit and banking services can be a powerful financial tool.

Click here to visit Money Smart.
 

After explaining how the payment process works through Bill Pay last week I ended by telling you I would show you how to find out if a Payee has received your payment. There are actually a couple of ways to find out but I’ll just pick the easiest one, after all who likes having to take a few extra clicks to find out.

Once you are in Bill Payment you will see a line of additional options at the top of places you can go (Make Payments, Expedited Payments, Manage Categories, etc.) You’ll need to click on “View Report”. This page defaults to showing you all of the bills you’ve paid for the current month, but if you need you can use the drop down box in the top left of the page and change it to show the range you are looking for.

Note: You can go all the way back to the last 12 months.

Now you just need to find the payment in question and you can see in the “Status/Confirmation” column. It will tell you the status of the payment along with the Reference Code. For electronic payments if the payment has been received it will say “Completed” and for payments that were sent out via a check that have cleared they will say “Cleared On XX/XX/XXXX”.

So now you don’t have to worry anymore whether that payment was received by your Payee or not. If you have questions or if you notice that a payment hasn’t cleared that should have be sure to give us a call.
 

We have several customers using our Bill Payment system and I’m sure many of them would never go back to licking stamps and addressing envelopes to pay their bills. I know that I wouldn’t! Chances are that if you’ve called in with questions or issues with Internet Banking or Bill Pay I’ve talked to you. One of the more common misconceptions with Bill Pay is how your Payees are actually paid, so I thought I would try to explain the process.

When you make a payment using Bill Payment the amount of the payment is debited out of your account shortly after the scheduled date for your payment to go out. Sometimes people mistake the debit to their account as meaning their payee has received their money. What actually happens is that we send out your payments either electronically or by check (depending on the Payee) it’s on a totally separate account. When your account is debited, that is just us moving the money over to cover your payment.

Make sure to notice when you’re making your payment it should list a “Delivered By” date just below the date you’ve scheduled the payment to go out on. The “Delivered By” date is when you can expect your payee to receive payment by. If you’ve noticed some of your Payees get their money faster than others that would be because the electronic payments are received faster than the ones we have to send checks out through the mail for.

So if you are wondering how to know for sure your payee has received payment; you’ll just have to check back next week where I’ll show you how to find out.