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Convenience Charge when using credit card or paying online

edro

edro

Lifer
This is so annoying.

I went to pay my Ohio taxes online and they charge you a $15 fee to pay with credit card.
I understand that the state shouldn't pay VISA and Mastercard fees, but $15 is outrageous.

$15!!!

Also, to pay my water bill online, there is a 2% fee, even when using debit!
Isn't that against VISA/MasterCard Terms of Service?
I thought you weren't allowed to pass fees on to the customer?

This is 2011! Everyone pays with credit cards (or debit cards) now!
 
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Yea our homeowners associated just added online payments. But it costs you an extra $10 fee to pay online. Ridiculous.
 
hehe yeah, i owed local taxes this year and they wanted to make me pay a fee to pay what I owed. I was like fuck that and sent in a check.
 
My water bill charges me a convenience fee every month. Comes out to about $3.00 and I pay it every month of course. Thankfully that's the only one. I think it is against their MC/Visa merchant agreement though.
 
Would you rather 1) general fund tax dollars be paying merchant fees for those taxpayers who choose to utilize card payments, or 2) the merchant fees be passed directly on to the taxpayer? Personally, I'm all for option 2. Merchants set the fee schedule, blame them for the outrageous fee.
 
Lotheron said:
My water bill charges me a convenience fee every month. Comes out to about $3.00 and I pay it every month of course. Thankfully that's the only one. I think it is against their MC/Visa merchant agreement though.
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It's frequently not contrary to any law, contract, or agreement. One utilities department that I support, for example, accepts payments only via cash or check. Oh, and if you want to use a credit card, there's this other company that is willing to charge your card, and then make your payment for you (for an additional [convenience] fee, of course). The utilities dept wouldn't be in breach of any agreement because they don't accept cards at all, and the payment processor wouldn't be in breach of any agreement because the only type of payment they accept is card, and the convenience fee applies to all of their payments.
 
GeekDrew said:
Would you rather 1) general fund tax dollars be paying merchant fees for those taxpayers who choose to utilize card payments, or 2) the merchant fees be passed directly on to the taxpayer? Personally, I'm all for option 2. Merchants set the fee schedule, blame them for the outrageous fee.
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This. If the payment method you want to use has added costs then you should foot the bill for that. It's your choice, if you don't want to pay it choose a method of payment that doesn't have those added costs.
 
GeekDrew said:
Would you rather 1) general fund tax dollars be paying merchant fees for those taxpayers who choose to utilize card payments, or 2) the merchant fees be passed directly on to the taxpayer? Personally, I'm all for option 2. Merchants set the fee schedule, blame them for the outrageous fee.
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This, exactly.

Everyone knows there are processing costs for merchants (the State, in this case). I think it's actually law in MO that they have to charge for it, to avoid the money coming out of state coffers.
 
edro said:
$15!!!
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Yeah, that is still high. It's a good point that since it's the government collecting payments, you're basically paying Visa/MC anyway because of general fund money being used to pay merchant fees. But $15 is obviously a money-raising scheme that unfairly punishes people who actually make things EASIER for them rather than harder. It probably costs them more money to accept checks since they have to pay employees to gather and sort the mail, open all the envelopes, sort out the checks, etc.

$15 is enough to cover a 2% merchant fee for a $750 payment. Most people aren't paying in $750 unless they screwed up their withholding.
 
With places like rental companies I think they hire out an outside company to handle online payments, that might be why there's the extra fee. The government should be able to to do an online transfer from your bank.
 
JTsyo said:
With places like rental companies I think they hire out an outside company to handle online payments, that might be why there's the extra fee. The government should be able to to do an online transfer from your bank.
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Yeah, my state lets you do a bank transfer, no need to go through a credit card. Very simple.
 
Governments are broke. This is called nickle and dime-ing my friend. Gotta keep the feudal lords, er, civil servants working.
 
Good. I'm glad they charge a fee to cover the payment instead of putting taxpayer money towards people paying with a CC.

If you're so angered by it, allow them to debit it from your checking account directly or write a check.

mmntech said:
Governments are broke. This is called nickle and dime-ing my friend. Gotta keep the feudal lords, er, civil servants working.
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Nickle and dime people for a service that costs them money?
 
AstroManLuca said:
Yes, it is nickel and diming because they are charging more than it costs them.
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Maybe they aren't getting paid directly by Visa. They might have an intermediary handling the transactions, adding to the cost. And the fee might not be 2%.

Regardless, you can easily get around this issue by writing a check, letting them debit it directly from your checking account, or having your bank mail them a check directly. So I don't really see a problem.
 
One time when I signed up for cell phone service I was charged a $3 fee for getting the bill in the mail. It was not charged on the initial bill when signing up, but on the next bill after the next month was due.

I was not told about the fee, nor given an option to opt out until after receiving the first bill with the extra $3 tacked on.
 
Bignate603 said:
This. If the payment method you want to use has added costs then you should foot the bill for that. It's your choice, if you don't want to pay it choose a method of payment that doesn't have those added costs.
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I would argue that for something like taxes, my online credit card payment (while it does add a small fee) saves money over having to have someone get my mail, open it, do the paperwork on it, stamp the check, bring it to a bank, etc. I could be wrong though.
 
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