MEMBER PROFILE

Tara Lambert

Tara Lambert started Getting Down to Business class one month after she moved to Ithaca. “I was planning to open my nutritional counseling practice and this class was invaluable…I don’t think I would have been prepared to open my practice without it. The class taught me everything. I learned profit/loss analysis, break even analysis and how to record and track my finances…”

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We want to say Thanks! to all our members who make Alternatives their primary financial institution, and we think we've found a great way to do it.

We're now offering active members the convenience of online billpaying, BillPay@Home, which usually costs $5.95/month for unlimited bills, for free!

If you have all three of the following, you can have FREE BILLPAY@HOME!**:

• Active Debit Card
• Current Loan or Line of Credit (Overdraft Protection on your Checking Account)
• Paperless Monthly Statements (must opt out of paper statements) **

Paying your bills with a click of a button is fast and easy. With BillPay@Home you can:

- Make multiple payments on a single screen
- Schedule future and recurring payments
- Review recent transactions
- Export to Quicken

And along with paying your bills without having to buy stamps and get the envelopes to the post office, you'll be saving trees too!

• Debit cards are the paperless way to use the cash in your checking account. Your Alternatives VISA Debit Card can be used like a credit card wherever VISA is accepted, but the amount of your transaction will come directly out of your checking account. If you don't have a debit card you can stop in and request one at the front desk.
  
• Paperless monthly statements give you access to your statements earlier than paper statements. They're safe and secure, and you can track your statements back to 2002. Finding an old transaction is at your fingertips at https://secure.alternatives.org/member/statements.php.
• You can choose paperless statements by logging into Member Only Services, clicking into estatements and changing your statement delivery method.

Signing up for BillPay@Home is easy. Go to:https://global1.onlinebank.com/897alternatives/online.htm. Or stop in and our Member Service Specialists will be glad to help you set up your services so you can take advantage of FREE BILLPAY.

Sign up today, and let us say THANKS! We appreciate you choosing Alternatives for all your financial needs.

**Rules to get BillPay@Home for Free
* Free BillPay@Home accounts will be reviewed on a monthly basis to assure that active account status is maintained.
* Inactive accounts for 60 days will receive an email reminder to maintain active account status.
* Inactive accounts for 90 day will have $5.95 monthly charge for BillPay@Home reapplied to the account.

Active Account Defined:
1. At least 4 card transactions every month
2. Maintain Loan or Line of Credit with payment history
3. Maintain paperless monthly statements (opting out of paper statements)

We know how important the security of your personal and financial information is to you - it's critically important to us too. That's why we've been working to implement new security enhancements to help deter fraud and ensure that we are providing you with the highest level of security while you are using our online bill pay service. In early December,you noticed a few changes to your online experience. Please note that for your protection, these new features will be required, and you've probably already set-up these features, but if you haven't, it will only take a few minutes of your time to walk through the set-up.

Most of the security enhancements are occurring behind the scenes. With the exception of a few initial steps on your part, you won't notice a change to the way you regularly manage your finances online. However, you will notice one important change to the service: when you log on to online bill pay, you will enter your user id on one screen and then enter your password on the next screen. In the background, we will be validating your user id.

Brief descriptions of some of the other new features are below.

Security Questions -
You will be prompted online to set-up a few security questions and answers. You will be able to select from a list of questions, but the answers you provide will be uniquely yours. The set-up only takes a moment. In the background, our systems will take note of your normal online banking patterns. If we detect anything unusual, you will be prompted to answer one or more of your security questions before being allowed to log in.

For example, if you typically access your online bill pay account from home and the office, and we suddenly detect someone trying to log on from a different country, we will present the security questions before access to your accounts is granted. If you are on vacation and simply need to access your account from a different location, you'll answer these few quick questions, and then you'll be ready to pay bills online as usual. But if someone is trying to access your accounts illegally, they won't be able to get in without knowing the answers to your security questions.

Your Personal Image -
In order to help you feel absolutely certain that you are logging on to our bill pay website, a new personal security image has been implemented. This is a picture that you choose from our library of images. You will also give the image a name - something that you can remember, but that would be difficult for someone else to guess. Going forward, every time you log on to our site, you will see your personal image and the name you gave it, guaranteeing you that you are logging on to our site. If you don't see your image, do not continue and contact us immediately.

As with the security questions, you will be prompted online to select your personal image. You do not need to take any action until you are asked to select your personal image and set-up your security questions online.

We hope that you continue to enjoy all the secure services that we offer online.