PACER billing?

[PoorGrammyinBK7]

Well, this is strange. We got a letter today, supposedly from the PACER Service Center, saying that we owe $20 and it is delinquent.

We have never received a bill from PACER - we had not used it very much.

Our billing statement on PACER only shows a balance of $8.96 from July (when we started the PACER account) up until today.

I thought they didn't even bill you if you were less than $10 in a quarter.

Has anyone had trouble with PACER mixups? Any thoughts?

[Keebler]

One weird thing I discovered about PACER is that the bills are all scattered. If you log on to different districts or different courts you rack up charges in multiple places. It's confusing because you look in any one spot and the amount you owe is smaller than the bill.

I seem to remember pretty good billing infomation. I would think you could log on and review the charges somehow to see if they make sense. If not, I'd give them a call and see what you can learn.

[PoorGrammyinBK7]

Well when I log on, it says we only owe $8.96 for the last 2 quarters July - up to tday and before that, we never heard of PACER. So I have no idea what they are talking about. I will try to call next week.

[Boscoe]

I believe the billing starts when you exceed $10 for the calendar year..............

[Keebler]

PACER bills quartly. They send you a bill when your balance exceeds $10.00. There's dozens of PACER websites and they all maintain seperate account balances. The whole list is here...

PACER Web links

While it's unlikely, it IS possible to log in to the wrong site and rack up some charges without realizing it. When you go to the PACER site you normally use, the charges at the OTHER PACER site don't show up. (I've done it accidentally and also on purpose and it's very confusing. Accidentally by logging in to District Court instead of Bankruptcy Court and on purpose by logging on to another State District to look up a class action lawsuit.)

Not until you get the quartly bill do you get ALL the charges from ALL of the PACER websites you've accessed. In fact, you CAN'T get a total of all your charges until the end of the quarter unless you log in to each and every PACER site you've used and manually add up all the charges.

The main PACER site is here...

PACER Account Information

This is the site where you can update your account information and make a payment on your account. The charges you've racked up don't appear here until the end of the quarter. (For some reason I can't log on here as of this post.)

More than once I've been confused about what my PACER bill should have been. Only after figuring all of this out did it begin to make sense. I've also received a PACER bill bigger than I though it should be but I was able to make sense out of the problem and the bill was correct.

[PoorGrammyinBK7]

Hi all!

Keebler, I just got home tonight from a holiday family gathering and found your message and link.

Apparently that is what happened as I had looked up an adversary's name one day a few months ago and tried to see what other people he might have sued in other states, etc.

This does not show up when I log in to my normal PACER and look at my billing statement (which is still less than $10). Actually some of it does show up, but not with as many pages.

So anyeway, when I logged on to your link, I found a quarterly statement (which was never received by me and why I thought it was a big mistake).

Sp thanks for your help.

I will call tomorrow and pay by debit card I guess - if they accept that!