Verizon charging $2 convenience fee to pay them online or by phone w/credit card

[spidey07]

Ah, ok. I was about to call you a dirty commie. Apologies.

Thanks for jogging my memory. Mainframes and SNA everywhere on that one. But the check machines were awesome. All IBM. It just worked.

Oh SNA how I hate thee. Oh DLSW how I hate thee. Good times and damn good money.

 

[gevorg]

This rip-off was pretty common in early internet days, but now it is totally unacceptable.

CA DMV still does this in 2011. San Francisco State University still does this in 2011. So if government organizations are doing it, corporate America wouldn't even blink about it.

 

[Slew Foot]

Random question, why is it OK to pay with a CC automatically but not as a one time scheduled payment?

 

[davmat787]

Random question, why is it OK to pay with a CC automatically but not as a one time scheduled payment?

I would guess it has something to with the fact that a human is not needed to take the call and process the payment. Also, they probably like that the account will be paid on time and take the tradeoff of a regular revenue stream that is process automatically. Maybe they get discounts for bulk automatic CC transactions too, but that is just a guess.

 

[spidey07]

Random question, why is it OK to pay with a CC automatically but not as a one time scheduled payment?

Spend commitments. Contracts usually have commit spend otherwise you wouldnt get agreement by both sides.

Rank amateurs on this board.

 

[dmcowen674]

Local news interviewed people on the street.

Not one person thought this pay to pay was a good thing.

Must not have been any P&Ners.

 

[davmat787]

Local news interviewed people on the street.

Not one person thought this pay to pay was a good thing.

Must not have been any P&Ners.

Of course no one wants to pay an extra two dollars, I don't think that is what anyone is saying. Rather, they are saying why the Verizon can justify this fee. Personally, I don't like having to pay money, to pay money, so I don't.

If you had a business that took credit cards, you might see this differently since that form of payment directly effects your bottom line.

The rage should be directed at the CC companies who charge these fees for you to use their product. Of course paying to use a product/service is reasonable.

 

[Nebor]

Local news interviewed people on the street.

Not one person thought this pay to pay was a good thing.

Shocking! I just saw that the president will address the nation about this in the next 20 minutes. All major networks are showing the podium already.

 

[lothar]

Does this apply only to Verizon "Wireless", or all of Verizon?
I have FiOS with them.

I actually prefer using autopay with my PenFed credit card for almost all accounts. They debit my account 14 days after the due date.

Look at it this way:
1.) Verizon charges my CC 14 days after the bill due date.
2.) I have a 25-30 day "grace" period with PenFed from when the Verizon charge was made on my CC.
3.) I'm on autodebit with PenFed, and they debit my bank about a week or two from the statement due date.

All in all, I earn interest for almost 2 months on the float. That's like them giving you an interest free loan for 2 months.

 

[lothar]

Good question, but I would assume the reason why is because the charge is done electronically, not over the phone via a human. So the associated costs will be much lower. Perhaps the CC companies have discounts for bulk electronic transactions, but that is just a guess.

Personally, I never enroll in any sort of automatic bill pay, via credit card and especially via checking account. Once they have your money, if a mistake happens it is too late and harder to get your money back. I don't mind doing so for fixed cost services such as insurance, but that is about it.

I can dispute VISA Charges for 60 days after the charge appears on my Credit Card statement. When or how I pay the bill has nothing to do with disputes.

 

[JS80]

Random question, why is it OK to pay with a CC automatically but not as a one time scheduled payment?

They're willing to pay a premium to guarantee monthly regular payments (I.e. Cash flow). I'm sure a band of finance monkeys came up with the math.

 

[CptObvious]

http://usa.visa.com/merchants/operations/checkoutfees.html#10states

Surcharges for credit card payments may be illegal if you live in one of these 10 states:

California
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Kansas
Maine
Massachusetts
New York
Oklahoma
Texas

In Florida, municipalities and state government have another statute that allows them to charge convenience fees for credit card payments, but I don't see how Verizon can get away with it.

 

[holden j caufield]

anybody who has any business sense and has seen BofA, Netflix etc. should know this is a PR nightmare. Just find a way to increase fees by few dollars etc. bs about improving coverage blah blah people will eat that up and think at least their money is being put to use. Yes it cost money with CC but find another way to add a surcharge. Nobody likes to get nickel and dime, especially from a multi billion dollar giant so when their contract is up more people will be walking than the extra $2 they make on those who still choose to pay via cc.

Whoever ok'ed this is giant dufus. You don't need an MBA from Harvard to see this is a huge fail especially at this time period.

 

[Atreus21]

Verizon charging $2 convenience fee to pay them

Paying a bill to pay a bill is ridiculous and should be illegal

Hopefully Congress steps on on this bullshit that has been going on by many utilities for far too long.

I know the rich Republicans in here will have no issue with this whatsoever. Hell many of them probably pocketing the "convenience fee" themselves.

12-29-2011

http://community.vzw.com/t5/Billing-and-Usage/2-Convenience-Fee/m-p/764316

$2 Convenience Fee


Verizon is going to start to gouge us out of even more money, that is if you pay your bill on the phone or online with a Credit Card. From what I have been reading starting January 15th, if you pay your bill with a credit card through the Verizon website or on the telephone, they are going to hit you with a $2 "Convenience Fee". If you set up Auto bill Pay with a Credit Card that fee is waived.

I don't understand what the difference is if I have it Auto paid or if I pay it when I want. Also the fee does not occur if you do an EFT from your bank account.

Title changed to reflect information in linked article.
admin allisolm

Switch to another carrier. Hit them where it hurts.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

My utility has been doing this with bills for as long as I've been a customer. I think they charge $3 for a credit card so I always use a direct withdraw from my bank account. Many other businesses charge more if you use a CC to recover fees as well.

 

[Linflas]

Funny how 99% of the time I run into fees like that it is when dealing with government online transactions.

 

[matt0611]

My utility has been doing this with bills for as long as I've been a customer. I think they charge $3 for a credit card so I always use a direct withdraw from my bank account. Many other businesses charge more if you use a CC to recover fees as well.

This is only for 1-time charges via phone or online.
Switch to monthly credit card or direct withdrawl billing and you're fine.
I don't know why you would want to do it another way anyway.

 

[CPA]

A lot of credit card companies have been adding on a fee when payments are made over the phone... which I never agreed with either... but that is just plain stupid to charge people a fee for an online payment. Online payments save everyone time and money, penalizing that is going to frustrate a majority of the customer base and they'll just switch to another carrier.

My company does because we have to pay the 3rd party who handles the calls for us. For online payments, you know as well as others, running a website is not cheap.

 

[CPA]

My utility has been doing this with bills for as long as I've been a customer. I think they charge $3 for a credit card so I always use a direct withdraw from my bank account. Many other businesses charge more if you use a CC to recover fees as well.

Mine, as well. And I suspect Dave's does too.

 

[Anarchist420]

I personally I'm pissed off that so many people are blaming "corporate greed" for this because even if you don't believe in ethics, it's still the government's fault. Reason being that Bank of America would not even exist for them to have to pass a fee on if we had completely unregulated banking and the government collecting its revenues exclusively in silver or gold.

 

[etrigan420]

I personally I'm pissed off that so many people are blaming "corporate greed" for this because even if you don't believe in ethics, it's still the government's fault. Reason being that Bank of America would not even exist for them to have to pass a fee on if we had completely unregulated banking and the government collecting its revenues exclusively in silver or gold.

Oh Jesus...further down the rabbit hole we go... D:

This will end up being a "Less than 0" sum game for Verizon.

 

[JSt0rm]

Funny how 99% of the time I run into fees like that it is when dealing with government online transactions.

Yes. Government is the worst invention in all of civilization.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

This is only for 1-time charges via phone or online.
Switch to monthly credit card or direct withdrawl billing and you're fine.
I don't know why you would want to do it another way anyway.

I can think of a few reasons not to do auto-pay. The main being that these companies are notorius fuck ups. In Canada here I have Rogers for my cell service and they can't seem to do a thing correctly. I've gone periods of 8 months of wrong bills from making one single change on my account that ended up in huge overcharging that never seemed to get corrected.

No way I want them automatically getting that money every month and having to go trough their bureaucratic hoops to get it back.

 

[Ausm]

I read that the FCC is going to look into this but I can't find the link right now.

 

[abaez]

I read that the FCC is going to look into this but I can't find the link right now.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/fcc-verizon-convenience-fee/