In our household, we’ve opened several Bank of America (BofA) Alaska Airlines credit cards over the years. Each time I face the same struggle to set up and make the credit card bills online.
Why do I care about keeping an account at BofA?
It’s hard to churn BofA credit cards without having a banking relationship with them. Once you have a BofA checking account and send part of your paycheck there, it is easy to get approved for an Alaska Airlines credit card repeatedly.
BofA Autopay
BofA has the most user unfriendly system ever designed to set up an autopay and you have to go through a series of steps.
- Go to the “Pay and Transfer” page in your account settings and request an “eBill” for a particular credit card.
- Your eBill will arrive after the next statement closing date and you must patiently wait for a month or set up a reminder to avoid a late fee charge.
- Once the eBill arrives, you will be able to set up autopay for your credit card bill (minimum, partial payment or statement balance).
- If you set up auto pay without going through eBills (listed above), you can only pay a fixed amount instead of being able to pay the statement balance.
BofA Autopay Errors
- Even after successfully setting up autopay, you may encounter several errors resulting in late fees (for payments not going through) and over-payments (from autopay not reducing the balance after a partial payment of the bill).
- The credit card eBills get turned off occasionally for mysterious reasons and the autopay set up disappears.
The workaround for this issue I adopted
I call the credit card customer service number (on the back of the card) a few days after the credit card charges, and use the teleprompter to pay manually by entering the bank check routing and account number.
You only have to do this once for each card after you meet the spending requirement and the annual fee has been posted (then cancel the card before the next annual fee). This method only works for credit card churners who have no interest in using BofA as their main day to day card.
For customers who use BofA credit cards for cash back
BofA has millions of customers who use its branded credit cards to earn cash back. To make recurring payments, I recommend requesting the eBills mentioned above or calling BofA Customer Relations at (888-623-0420) to set up autopay over the phone.
Conclusion
BofA has 0ver 60 million consumer and small business clients in the United States and it is a shame that you can’t easily set up autopay for paying credit card bills. BofA has a very good online banking and bill payment system along with Zelle.