DygiScape

AOL Drops ‘Bill Pay’ Services For Users

AOL’s discontinues their personal financial management services (”Bill Manager Plus and AOL Bill Pay”), effective April 30, 2008, in an e-mail to users. The e-mail fails to provide a reason for the closure of the service, except to advise users to use Yodlee if they would like to continue using a similar service.

For those not aware, AOL Bill Manager Plus was one of the first personal finance aggregation services provided free to members of AOL several years ago. I used it quite a bit and have enjoyed it. It was integrated with your AOL login information so it required the Account Security Question (ASQ) to access your information. It was very secure, mostly reliable, and indeed it was great to use.

This is the e-mail that was sent to users:

——– Original Message ——–

Subject:	Important Notice To AOL Bill Manager Plus/AOL Bill Pay Users
Date:	Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:30:46 -0400 (EDT)
From:	AOLMemberInfo <aolmemberinfo@dc.aol.com>
Reply-To:	AOLMemberInfo <AOLMemberInfo-[REDACTED]@dc.aol.com>
To:	[REDACTED]@aol.com

You are receiving this email because our records indicate you are currently a registered user of the AOL Bill Manager Plus/Spending Alerts/AOL Bill Pay service powered by Yodlee. Please read this notice carefully.

Effective April 30, 2008, AOL will no longer be offering or supporting the AOL Bill Manager Plus/Spending Alerts/AOL Bill Pay feature powered by Yodlee.

If you would like to use the latest (free) version of Yodlee’s service, you can visit Yodlee directly at moneycenter.yodlee.com and set up your accounts there.

Before April 30, 2008, be sure to take note of all of the web site addresses (URLs) for each of the accounts you manage with AOL Bill Manager Plus/Spending Alerts/AOL Bill Pay, as well as the associated login information (username and password) for each account.

To view all of your accounts and associated login information (usernames and passwords), simply:

1. Log in to Bill Manager Plus via: money.aol.com/bill-manager-plus
2. Click on the “Manage Accounts” tab
3. Make note of each web site for each of your accounts
4. Make note of each username and password for each account (found by clicking either the “View Login Info” or “Edit Login” links associated with each account)

After April 30, 2008, any personal or account information you have stored as part of AOL Bill Manager Plus/Spending Alerts/AOL Bill Pay that you have not removed prior, will be permanently deleted from the service.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Please note that this email address cannot accept replies.

©2008 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved. AOL and the AOL Triangle Logo are registered trademarks of AOL LLC. All other trademarks and/or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

I can only assume that AOL is squeezing out all their unnecessary affinity relationships and partners to minimize costs. While tragic to some, it may be the only thing that can keep AOL competitive against Yahoo, MSN and Google. However, I don’t see why they had to close this program. It costs virtually nothing to operate, and helps satisfy many thousands of paying subscribers. I would rather they partner with Mint instead of Yodlee, but I guess that’s what the contract negotiators agreed on.

For a similar personal finance management system, check out Mint. Mint is a newer, faster, cleaner service that lets you securely add in all your financial accounts and track your activity and manage your budgets online, not to mention an easy-to-remember URL, Mint.com.

What are your thoughts on this? Dish it in the comments.

~Joe