Power company recently outsourced their payment system and now have to pay a fuckin’ fee to pay my goddamned bill. The only way to avoid that is autopay.
Further infuriating is I have to re-add my bank info to yet another third party system.
Fuck the modern world, man.
Use Bill Pay from your bank/credit union to mail them a check (without even paying postage yourself)
I can’t updoot this enough. Fuck everyone’s fee ridden bullshit apps, websites, outsourced garbage services. I make almost everyone send me a paper bill or i just won’t pay.
It’s fun arguing with companies that claim they can’t send paper bills anymore.
I’m sorry, we don’t accept money any more
I made the numbers up as I don’t recall them offhand but my energy company effectively has this policy now. :/
They’re required to have some method of payment that doesn’t involve additional fees. Ironically, it’s usually the method that involves the most work for their employees.
I do exactly this. My bank will try to use ACH or a one time debit card automatically, but inevitably ends up sending a check each month. What’s better is if I use the bill the water company sends and mail it back with a check there is a fee, but they don’t charge it when my bank sends a check.
They’re not trying to fuck over the banks. They have better lawyers.
That’s the way to go! I pay all my bills through the bank. All they need is your services account number and a mailing address. It’s much nicer when you can pay all your bills in one place instead of having to deal a bunch of different payment apps/websites.
Exactly. I control when and how the money goes out. This way I don’t have to hope that a) the payee doesn’t make mistakes and take out more than once or more than the scheduled amount and b) that the payee isn’t caught in a data breach with my banking details.
At the end of the day, I just take a little time to make sure all the bills are scheduled for the right amounts over the coming few weeks.
Yeah, I’ve been meaning to look into that. Especially so I can start unlinking my bank details from sites that will eventually expose them in a breach.
That’s step one. Step two is to get enough solar and whole-house battery storage so you can cut the grid and give them $0.
Would be nice, but where I live less than a fifth of days in the year are sunny on average.