NEW YORK (CNN/Money) –You owe the phone company $60. But because of some mistake – by the phone company, your bank or the electronic payment clearing house processing the payment – $600 is taken out of your account.

Oh, bureaucratic joy. You now get to work to reclaim your cash.

Online bill paying and automated bill payments (where you authorize a service provider to withdraw money directly from your bank account) have been on the rise among consumers. In 2003, the number of checks processed by the Federal Reserve system fell 4.7 percent, marking the fourth consecutive annual decline, and the steepest one yet.

But what happens if something goes wrong in the fast-paced, paperless world? Instead of $60, you're out $600. What do you have to do to get your money back?

Chances are good it will take you longer to recover what you're owed than it took for the money to be siphoned out of your account.

"Money moves very well from consumer bank accounts to businesses. But it doesn't move back very well. It moves back very slowly," said Stephen D. Hannan, administrator of the Howard County Office of Consumer Affairs in Columbia, Md.

"It should be one call," he said. In reality, it may be a few calls, a letter, an investigation, and several days.

How long it takes depends on how cooperative your service provider is, whether your payment was an Automated Clearing House (ACH) payment, or how long your financial institution takes to investigate the matter.

Your first step should be to call the company that received the payment and try to resolve things with them, said Michael Herd, spokesman for the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA).

NACHA sets operating rules for the nation's automated clearing house (ACH) network, which processes electronic payments, including "a very large majority" of the direct bill payments and online payments consumers make, Herd said.

You should also notify your bank that you're disputing the charge, according to John Hall, a spokesman for the American Bankers Association.

If the service provider won't rectify the situation or disputes that an error or unauthorized withdrawal was made, Herd said, you should ask your financial institution to recredit your account.

If yours was an ACH payment, and you're reporting the error within 60 days of its occurrence, your bank, under NACHA's rules, must recredit your account automatically, Herd said.

In the event your payment was not processed through the ACH network, then you still have rights to get your money back.

Under Section 205.11 of Regulation E of the Federal Reserve Act – which governs how billing errors in electronic fund transfers should be handled – a bank must investigate the error or unauthorized withdrawal within 10 business days of your reporting it to them, assuming you report the error within 60 days.

The bank then has three business days to report the results of the investigation to you. And it must correct the error within one business day after concluding the error occurred.

If a bank can't finish the investigation within 10 days, it must provisionally credit your account with the amount you say was unauthorized for payment, including interest, within 10 days of receiving notice from you, which the bank may require in writing.

If the error was yours -- you accidentally authorized a $600 payment instead of $60 -- "there's no protection," Hall said. "It's up to the discretion of the bank. But because it's a very competitive industry, banks are likely to work with you."

When you agree to have money automatically deducted from your bank account by a service provider whose charges vary from month to month -- such as on a phone bill -- you must receive a copy of the charges 10 days in advance of when the money will be withdrawn. (No such notice is required for bills that are the same every month.)

That gives you time to dispute the charges if you think they're wrong. Take advantage. "You're always in a worse position in terms of leverage when the money's out of the account," said Gail K. Hillebrand, a senior attorney at Consumers Union.

If you're not making headway with the service provider, you can revoke your authorization for the company to automatically debit your account, Herd said.

But revoking that privilege can only be done under the company's terms and it may be that you have to give them a number of days' notice before it goes into effect.

To minimize your chances of billing errors or unauthorized withdrawals with electronic payments, Hillebrand recommends you only automate payments to a biller who has a history of accurate billing.

She also suggests only automating payments to service providers whose bills aren't likely to vary much month to month.

Hannan recommends using a credit card account to pay for any bills you wish to automate – providing that you're diligent about paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month. Otherwise you'll pay interest and late fees.

His reasoning: When you suspect a billing error, under federal law, you won't owe interest or fees while you dispute the charge, and you won't be out any money while you're settling the matter.