Auto Drafts For Paying Regular Bills In Thailand

[Jingthing]

I will probably be setting up my TOT and power company bills to be payed from my Thai bank account (Siam Commercial). Sometimes you hear horror stories of drained accounts and no recourse by ATM cloning and insider bank crime, but I have never heard any concern about that happening relating to autodrafts to pay major utility bills. Any reason for concern about this?

Edited May 28, 2007 by Jingthing

[sbk]

We have a separate smaller account for utility bills. Deposit money into it each month. We've been doing this for a few years now and have never had any problems.

[Jingthing]

This is very good advise. However, I would actually prefer to not open another bank account if it really isn't necessary. Since I am not a banker and I don't know how they operate, I still can't see why it would be much of a risk to do an autodraft agreement even on a fat bank account. If the banks themselves were total criminals, they could just drain your account anyway. I have never once heard of autodraft bill pay being linked to drained bank accounts in Thailand, or anywhere for that matter. The agreements are very specific; they only authorize your name and your bank account to go to the bank account of only one payee, the phone company, for example. I still don't see how this could ever be used to direct your bank account to a criminal.

Edited May 29, 2007 by Jingthing

[Smokin Joe]

I've had telephone and electric paid this way for over two years through Siam City bank with no problems.

[naka]

Get online access to your Thai bank ... At least then you can monitor things,

any you don't need to auto pay, just log on each month and pay your bills.

You need to pre-register the Payee(s).

sbk's suggestion makes sense as well What's to lose opening a second account ?

Naka.

Edited May 30, 2007 by naka

[dutch]

Since 5 years my TOT automatically through UOB (former Bank of Asia).

Never had a problem.

Unfortunately the TOT makes 2 invoices.One for domestic and one for international calls.

They only can do the automatic for one of them

UOB doesn't know how to handle and TOT tells me to go to the bank