3 ms·

My water bill from the city adds $3 for credit card. That's more than 10% most months!

• seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Do they offer direct payment from your checking account? If so, this is an incentive fee to do that rather than use a credit card. It is annoying however when the only alternative given to using a credit card is a paper check sent somewhere using a stamp (but that is where your bank’s autopay might be useful).
  • gs17 3y ago
    They do, but it's a "give us your account number and we promise to keep it forever totally secure and you agree to auto-pay" thing. They failed to get my name correct after having it spelled out multiple times, shut off our water because someone requested it for a different address (to their credit, they did turn it back on at the right address within a day after waiting on hold, and the person even agreed the name thing was funny, just not funny enough to fix), I just don't trust them to not make it a bigger issue down the line than the fee if I make that choice. I would gladly send a check instead (and yes, I'm aware the account number is on the checks), one of the only perks my bank has is the ability to send checks to pay bills easily.
    • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      If you wrote them a check, they would also have your account number forever…so I’m not sure how this would be different. Auto pay works well for orgs that don’t want to bother with their own payment portal. Unfortunately the USA doesn’t hav something like the online pay slips they use in Switzerland. There you just pay any bill directly from your own bank’s portal.
• throwawaymaths 3y ago
  That's not really a junk fee since doing cc it does cost them a processing cost and you can opt out of it.