Bill Paying in time

I used a facility for paying bills online though a bank account for paying a credit card bill. Earlier I was using NEFT for this purpose, and I thought that facility called Bill Pay would be an improvement. Two days later, the credit card company sent me a reminder to pay. I was irritated to be reminded after paying well in time and called the customer service to complain. The person who took the call said the payment had taken four days to reach them, and on the day the reminder was sent the amount had not reached them. In the modern day and age, justifying a four-day delay in passing the customer’s money on seems wrong to me. Computers do the work and unless the bank consciously slow down the process, they would not take four days. What is the moral?

1. Don’t assume that mechanisms banks provide for online payment are fast. Your account is debited immediately! But when your bill gets paid is another matter. Get them to tell you in writing how fast they will pay your bill.
2. Prefer to pay using NEFT. There is an intermediary here who does not allow banks to profit from delaying your payments. 

I   Later, I received a "politely" worded message from another card-issuer saying "You can now use NEFT to pay our card bill and get same day credit of funds". This was part of their acknowledgement message saying that my payment was credited on such and such date. Why not be fairer to millions of customers and say "Watch out! NEFT may be the fastest way of paying our bill. It usually gives same day credit of your funds". 

Srinivasan Ramani