Waste Management Bill Payment Fee

[mjgkramer]

Today I decided to pay my $130+ quarterly Waste Management bill over the phone using a credit card. I went through the steps including keying in my lengthy account number. Finally I got to the point where I could give my credit card number and was told by the phonebot that by paying this way, I would incur a $5 service charge. I thought the whole object of inconveniencing the customer with automated phone systems was to keep down operating cost, not to make a profit.

[Black Landlord]

Commonplace, but I suspect verboten as it technically constitutes raising the price for paying by credit.

[Michael]

Yep. Our community theater charges an extra $5 to order tickets online, but not to call and talk to a real person to take the order. Seems odd, but I'll go along and call. I'm sure not going to pay them extra for them to save money.

[Don C]

Same with paying taxes. Costs more to e-file than to send paper. Both Feds and state!

Licenses plates here cost extra to purchase online.

Since the Center for the Arts is not too far out of my way going home, I'll purchase show tickets at the drive up window at no additional fee rather than pay what I consider exorbitant TicketMaster fees.

[John B.]

They're exploiting a loophole in the credit card merchant agreements that allow for a different price for payments made through a different transaction method. Generally, you can't charge a different price for a credit card transaction than a cash transaction when it's happening over the counter, but since a web transaction is different, they're marking it up with a service fee.

Our local governments and utilities have been in on this deal for a while...they have a third-party company process their online credit card transactions and charge a convenience fee, so that the customer making the payment essentially pays the credit card processing fee as well. (A plus or minus depending on your opinion.)

Most businesses charge the same, but I've seen a couple discussions about this recently as a way for small businesses to recoup the costs of installing and maintaining additional payment systems (even though the apparent effort to process an individual online transaction is less than an in-person transaction).

[Racer X]

last time I heard, it was an extra $20 to pay a ticket by phone with a CC here in Seattle.