August 30th, 2010
Review: BillFloat – Can’t Pay Your Bills? They Have you Covered (For A Fee)
It’s the 1st of the month and time to pay the bills. After unexpected medical bills or some other financial emergency bungled your budget earlier this month, you realize there’s a bill or two your funds can’t cover. What do you do? You float it.
BillFloat, founded in 2009 and incubated by PayPal, has a simple, fresh solution to an old problem—what to do when you can’t pay the bills.
Instead of turning to Mom and Dad, friends, expensive payday loans, high-interest bank loans, or skipping payment altogether and risking the consequences (penalties, credit damage, getting services terminated), BillFloat pays your bill for a fee as low as $4.99 and you pay them back within 30 days. Plus, the site requires no credit checks and uses its own “decisioning engine” to determine qualified customers.
Here’s how it works:
- Sign up as a BillFloat customer for free, where you provide basic contact information as well as social security number, banking routing, account number, and bank username and password. This information is required to verify your bank account to ensure your ability to repay. BillFloat also assures that they use the same financial security and data protection that big banks.
- Select from over 3,000 billers in the database, such as cable providers and insurance companies, to pay your bill direct to them. Input your bill amount, date that BillFloat should pay it, and Billfloat gives you a fee depending on how high the bill is. For example, a $60 Comcast bill has a $4.99 service fee, while a $225 All-State car loan bill has a $14.06 fee.
- Pay back Billfloat within 30 days.
- As a bonus, when you pay back BillFloat on time, your Bill Payment Power goes up and BillFloat can extend you more credit to pay bills (up to $1,000) and lower your fees.
In a nutshell, you pay a super-low fee to float your bill for awhile, get a 30 day extension, protect your credit, avoid service termination, and use a flexible, affordable alternative to mainstream bill-payment options that otherwise cost you money (expensive loans and bank fees) and stress (borrowing from family).
So what’s the catch?
It sounds like a savvy service that is ripe for recessionary times when cash is tight for struggling consumers. What makes it dangerous is that it’s so easy and affordable to do. It can initiate a nasty habit of relying on BillFloat to float your bills if you are prone to paying late or breaking the budget. Plus, the Bill Payment Power is a clever incentive to snag repeat customers by giving an incentive to keep using BillFloat to float bigger bills for higher fees.
“We will provide consumers relief from the $32 billion in overdraft protection, non-sufficient funds, and late fees that are paid by American families every year,” said BillFloat’s CEO to TechCrunch. As a last resort when you are strapped for cash and bills are piling, BillFloat is one of the better alternatives out there to keep up with payments. But only once in a blue moon. Remember that your best, fee-free bill payment option is to budget to make sure you never have to rely on any other bill-paying option other than yourself.
Bottomline: BillFloat is a start-up with a new, low-cost bill payment service that covers your bill and gives you a 30 day extension to pay back.
Related posts:
- eBillme Review: Start Shopping Online With Cash eBillme, a payment alternative that lets you pay cash when you shop online, is an innovative solution to debt-free, credit-free...
- Rudder Review Rudder is a free financial tracking tool, specifically designed to streamline and help manage your personal budget. The general state...
- Review: Pentagon Federal Credit Union’s Promise Visa Consumers have been in a love-hate relationship with their credit cards for quite some time now, and while some issuers...
- Review: HelloWallet, The Latest Startup In Personal Finance Websites For the price of a cup of coffee, HelloWallet will revolutionize how we think and manage our personal finances and...
- Review: ReadyForZero Helps Consumers Cut Debt Down To Nada The average consumer carried $7,752 in credit card debt in July. ReadyForZero is a website that just launched today that...
I have been trying to use bill float for the last three months, since Jan 22nd and it says it is upgrading? For three months?? I have used this company twice in the past sucsessfully but now it hasn’t worked for months because of upgrading? Wouldn’t you go out of business if you were upgrading for three months, and couldn’t make any money ?? I am a bit confused. I have called the 800 number to get a answering machine and no return calls. The sad thing is Im terminally ill and have a disabled daughter and without being able to get help with my gas bill its getting disconected tomorrow, which means no heat or hot water for myself with congestive heart failure or my daughter with cerbral palsy! I am so upset and have no idea what I am going to do!! I have emailed bill float two months ago and got some form email back, and still it’s not working. What the hell is going on?
Hi Misty,
BillFloat is currently upgrading their platform which may be the reason you are experiencing a disruption in our service. We are so sorry for the inconvenience this upgrade may be causing you. Please rest assured we are working as quickly as possible to complete the changes. All users affected by the upgrade will be notified as soon as they are complete. If you would like to discuss this further please don’t hesitate to contact me directly by sending a quick e-mail to support@billfloat.com with the subject line, “Attn: Lisa”. I will be happy to work with you directly to answer any additional questions or concerns. Thank you for posting!
Best,
Lisa R.
BillFloat Customer Support
support@billfloat.com
hello im trying to get a biil paid… but where i put my job employer it want let me put the whole name in that area, is there a phone # i can call to see whats going on?
This suck…. I was unable to pay of my loan due to me losing my debit card.I finaly got a new on and whent threw there thing party Ashmer to pay of my lone. This was about 2month ago and when I log on to my account it states they haven recieved any apyment and continues to charge me fees. I tried to use bill float again but im unable to due to this account still being open. Im not getting info from any of the reps just a bunch of numbers to call. Im tierd of the run around.
Same here I have used bill float maybe twice since 2011. and now when I go to the very end to finalize the contract its a no go on the I agree button. Maybe they are using payday loans to help fund them or they are going out of business. I sent an email to a Peter Mansfield I believe he is maybe the CEO or something there. Becuase no one in there customer service has a clue.
have been using billfloat since feb 2012,so far so good,everything working great!