We now pay to pay ???

[JHC]

We are now being charged for paying our bills! Nooo you say that must be wrong….. not on you Nellie mate.

If you pay your account by automatic payment you will not be charged for paying your account..
If you request a paper statement you will be charged $10 - $12 for each payment you make.
If you pay by credit card over the internet you will be charged a convenience fee of $1.58.

And who are these hungry shysters ? The Telcos Vodafone and NZ Telecom (Telecom have recently made a name change to Spark) I know…. Unbelievable

What is a spark in the electrical trade = a manifestation of a fault?????

 

[Krummhorn]

We've seen the trend towards going 'paperless' recently with respect to paying bills. However, we have yet seen (at least here) the extra charges for for paying from paper statements, or the convenience fees for credit card transactions.

Where we do see those 'convenience' fees is if one orders theater tickets through a box office ... usually a $4 (US) charge for ordering online. If you go in person, there is no additional charge. I fail to see what exactly costs $4 for processing the online transaction ... seems to be a ripoff, imho.

We do pay most of our bills electronically over secured (https) sites as a matter of convenience for us, which saves the 49 cents postage for snail-mail. A few of our accounts (streaming television, phone {mobile and land lines}, gas for heating, and insurance payments) are on automatic payment cycles.

I'm waiting for the day they try to charge for minutes of internet time ... hopefully that will never come about, but there is talk about certain 'levels' of internet use: basic, best, better, premium, gold for instance with each level going higher having more bandwidth. The cable companies here are all losing business right and left because of the streaming capabilities feeding off the internet.

I have a DSL connection (50 Mb) for the internet which is much much much better than cable ever was and cheaper too.

 

[Dorsetmike]

Quite a few things over here are cheaper with automatic payments (direct debit); one that surprises me is that I can have the local daily paper (not one of the national cr@p ones) delivered for £3.20 ($5.30) per week using auto payment whereas to go to a newsagents and buy over the counter would cost me £4.10 ($6.80) cash per week, an average saving of £0.15 ($0.25) per day.

The last time we had the paper delivered by a "paper boy" from a shop (over 10 years ago) the delivery charge was over £3/$5 per week go figure. I don't know what the % mark up there is on newspapers, but I'm not complaining!

One thing that does annoy me is having to change car insurance companies every year to be able to get the "introductory offer" staying with the same company for a second or subsequent year means your premium is hiked by about 30% as a new customer, for the first year you might get insured for say £200, next year is likely to be £300+ unless you change companies where you may pay about £210 - £220; what happened to the concept of "valued customer" not exactly conducive to customer loyalty.

Same thing is happening with cable/satellite broadband, phone and TV subscriptions, ridiculously low sign up rates, "new customers only" the existing customers get screwed, I'm paying more than twice the "introductory" rate

 

[teddy]

Mike, I am paying £137.00 a year fully comp plus AA Roadside Assistance and protected no claims with Saga. Thats a 2 litre turbo 307 estate. They send me a price promise every year to match any quote I can get, so I go on the net and am able to stay with them.
Colin, its the same here. Want a paper bill, its extra.

teddy

 

[Dorsetmike]

I'll look into that thanks.

 

[Krummhorn]

. . . one that surprises me is that I can have the local daily paper (not one of the national cr@p ones) delivered for £3.20 ($5.30) per week . . .

Locally it's cheaper to have the printed copy delivered as opposed to getting it online ... the online version is 4 times the delivered rate; I fail to see the logic there.

One thing that does annoy me is having to change car insurance companies every year to be able to get the "introductory offer" staying with the same company for a second or subsequent year means your premium is hiked by about 30% as a new customer, for the first year you might get insured for say £200, next year is likely to be £300+ unless you change companies where you may pay about £210 - £220; what happened to the concept of "valued customer" not exactly conducive to customer loyalty.

Wow - that's horrible, Mike ... my auto insurance has never risen for a number of years - we pay about $1,100.00 (USD) annually for two vehicles (2004, 2006) with full coverage. For every year that passes without any claims, the annual rate actually is reduced by $50.

Same thing is happening with cable/satellite broadband, phone and TV subscriptions, ridiculously low sign up rates, "new customers only" the existing customers get screwed, I'm paying more than twice the "introductory" rate

I encountered that when I changed from cable to dsl connection years ago ... I was able to get a 'rate lock' that didn't change for 5 years. When that five years was over, the rates did rise, but only 5% more each year. Most of those rate hikes were for increased taxes however.

Kh ♫

 

[Dorsetmike]

I rarely bother with the online version even though it is free, I find the printed & delivered has far more of the small items of purely local interest which get lost in the hyped up on line version.

As an aside I do wonder how news papers would manage front page headlines if the words "Disaster", "Horror" and "Drama" were banned?