Cost of Pacer? Do I need it?

[botsal]

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[MarkHenry]

Thanks for the information.

[SadPanda]

Even though I just filed, PACER has already come in handy for me - I didn't have a copy of my petition and I was able to save it as a PDF to my computer. I ended up finding a few things that were missing from my petition that I hadn't realized when I looked it over before signing it. They're not huge issues, but I'm glad I caught them, since I'm pretty sure my petition will have to be amended.

However, I can see how some people could end up using PACER too much and spend more than they realized.

The price went up earlier this year. It's now $0.10 a page and if you don't go over $15.00 in a quarter, the fees are waived for that quarter. I'm pretty sure the current quarter ends September 30.

[DaisysMom]

SadPanda that's true about not going over $15.00. I filed a Chapter 7, and checked it's status on Pacer every few days. Going to the query page is free and there you can check to see if the date of any new filings has changed. If the date hasn't changed then there is noting new to look at. I went through the entire BK process...fully informed and never went over the $15.00 quarterly amount so I never had to pay for any pacer services.

The trick is to learn to be patient and not use it unless their is a real concern or you need some of the info that is available there. I had to learn that once my BK was filed, there are many days, even weeks when nothing was being filed or changed and there was no sense in adding up pacer fees for nothing. If the query page shows nothing has changed (by the date of last activity changing) then just close it and relax.

DM

[SadPanda]

That's what I did too - since just doing the Query to get to my case page was free, I just looked at the "date of last filing." If it hadn't changed since the last time I looked, I knew there was nothing new to see, so I didn't need to click anything and it didn't cost anything. I saved everything I could (petition, mailing matrix, etc.) to my computer, so that if I wanted to view it again later, it wouldn't cost any money. If I couldn't save the page as a PDF or .htm file, I just copied and pasted everything on the page(s) into Word and saved the file.

I also checked "review billing history" periodically, so I would know how much my total was so far, and whether I was close to the $15 limit. Sometimes, fees for pages I viewed weren't added to my billing history until the following day. The quarter ended September 30, and I received an email a few days ago from PACER that said, "Usage for this account was less than $15 for this quarterly billing cycle. In accordance with the Electronic Public Access fee schedule, the fees for this quarter have been waived." My "billing history" total went back to $0.00 after the new quarter started October 1.