How Much is A Dollar Worth?
My wife and I pay our bills online. I’m guessing most of you do too. Usually paying online is painless. Today it wasn’t.
I posted this on Twitter after paying our Qwest bill online:
We were charged an extra $1 for paying our bill online. We’ve never seen the fee before, so it was a shcok. Of course, Qwest explains that one can avoid the fee by “mailing in a payment.” Let’s get honest, no one does that anymore and Qwest knows it.
How much is a $1 worth to Qwest? I can tell you it is costing them much more than the 100 pennies it’s costing us: Irritated patrons, bad publicity and a potential loss of a customer (we’ve been thinking about jumping ship for some time now, this may have sealed the deal).
Adding unexplained random fees, no matter how small, will cost you more than the fee itself. People know when they’re being nickled and dimed. Is it worth it?
What do you think about convenience fees?
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UPDATE – 3.28.10: I got word from a few readers that Qwest has recently done away with the “convenience fee” mentioned in this post. Sure enough, when I logged on to pay this month’s bill, we found it removed as well:
Could this be the power of social media in action? This has been a popular post, as most people are pretty irked by this fee. Read the comments to figure out why.
Props to Qwest for actually listening to their customer base!
Get over it – it's 1 dollar! How much is a dollar worth to you?
Dude. The dolla's not the point. At least, I don't think it is.
It's the same thing as airlines charging to carry bags. Could you travel bag-less? Sure, but it's a whole lot easier to travel with a suitcase.
i pay a $10 convenience fee to pay my car payment online….
which i would rather pay than send in a check. I get a confirmation number, so that I have something to dispute with if it doesn't post, sending in a check doesn't give me that confirmation unless I spend the extra to have it sent certified. I don't mind spending 10 bills to have peace of mind knowing that my bill is paid.
But certified mail doesn't cost $10. And how is it a convenience with a company like Qwest? It's their nature to do business online. The inconvenience is to receive, open, process and post the paper edition of your payment. For what it's worth, I'd send any bill certified and insured – for under $10 – and then rest easy that the USPS will guarantee the delivery.
There are 2 possible winning outcomes for Qwest – the people who don't see the charge and pay it and the people who notice but don't do anything about it. They don't care which bucket you fall into as long as you pay the fee. If you want to change things, I think you need to vote with your dollar on this one so you don't become a success point for their campaign. You better believe they're watching the statistics closely. Can you still pay online by doing free bill pay with your bank? Cable, Telecom and mobile companies have a lot to learn!
You are correct that it cost less to send certified. But then I have to send my bill sooner, i would rather pay the $10 to be able to sit at home on the days leading up to or the day of my due date, so that I don't have budget like most americans.
A Convenience Fee is just that..you are paying them for the convenience of paying last minute, if that is the case, so the bill is flagged as that and rushed to the top of the processing stack. If you want to avoid that, set it up on you bank account to send them the check, then you don't have to pay a convenience fee, nor do you have to pay the $0.44 for a stamp…
A postage stamp to send that bill is $0.44. To some, paying the extra $0.56 is worth it to pay online.
I get personally annoyed by any convenience fees knowing from working in IT that paying bills online dramatically reduces the processing time of the company and lowers their bottom dollar. So then they charge me just because they think I'll pay it. If the convenience fee goes beyond a couple bucks, I'm switching companies or using mail just to stick it to them. Yeah, that's right, pay those administrative folks to process this! I also exercise my right as a citizen of a free society that embraces capitalism to file my complaint with the company over there excessive convenience fees and let them know my plan to either drop them or stick it to them and help keep those adminstrative jobs!
However, so far I have found that I can avoid convenience fees through automated drafts from my bank account. When you have 10 bills a month and all them are tacking on a 5 dollar convenience fee…well…you do the math.
For $120/yr x 4 year loan a year…maybe you could have got leather seats or something. Or better yet, make an extra mortgage loan payment and save yourself a couple grand in interest.
i think the point is: why add $1 now when they were able to do it without any fees the last time?
It's called COST of doing business… look it up!
I don’t get it. Qwest pushes people into paperless billing, which saves Qwest postage and printing costs, only to require a fee. Dubious. I cannot wait until my contract is up.
wow, suckin up to the man, eh? $10 is outrageous to pay online. They already have their servers set up, so maintenance costs are minimal. Plus, theu don't need anyone to take the payments via phone or in person. It's a scam and people like you who roll over make it easier for companies to get away with it.
shame on you, you do us all a disservice. And I don't want to hear the “the economy is down, we need to stay in business” either…
I have been a Qwest customer for over ten years and I have been very happy because Qwest use to treat their customers right. Being a computer consultant I have also recommended Qwest to many of my customers over the years as they were the best of the thief’s who advertise one monthly charge and then add another $20 or $30 in fees. Starting a couple of years ago they started adding a fee for this and a fee for that until Comcast is now starting to look good to me.
This latest “convenience fee†is nothing more than their way to get more money out of our pocket. It is Qwest’s way of saying “I know the economy is bad and you are having troubles paying rent and feeding your families and I feel for you but do you know how much it costs to heat our CEO’s 10 bedroom homes?â€Â
The “Convenience Fee†is bogus, it costs Qwest much more to print and mail a bill, then to hire people to open and process a handwritten check. Not to mention all the bounced checks that on-line payments alleviate I say Qwest should drop my bill by a dollar instead of raising it for me making it easy or let’s say “Convenient†for Qwest to processes my payment.
I paid my Convenience Fee last month and then I changed to paper Bill. As I sit here writing a check to Qwest and putting a 45 cent stamp on the envelope I realize that this old school snail mail is pretty “Convenient†and it just saved me 65 cents.
I say we all call their bluff and all go to paper billing and see who it is more inconvenient for them or us!
Apparently, more than it's worth to you. So if they're not worth anything to you, send me yours.
I am now this –> <– much closer to telling Qwest to take my home telephone line and shove it. Fact is, I don't really need a home phone anymore, and since they've been taking their sweet damn time getting DSL to our community, I say screwem.