I was feeling kind of ornery about paying monthly service fees, so I decided to pick a fight. Seems to me that turnabout is fair play. Has anybody else tried this?
Them: Recurring Card Payments charged to a credit or debit card and Electronic Funds Transfer payments made under a recurring payment plan are subject to installment fee charges. Please refer to your premium bill for installment fee details and amounts.
Me: Please explain what this fee is for?
Them: The $4.00 installment fee pays for the processing of your monthly statements and payments. The installment fee is still applicable if you are enrolled in our Paperless Billing option.
Me: Very good, thank you for your explanation.
Please be advised that effective immediately, I also charge a service
charge in the amount of $6.39 with each payment that I make. I charge
this fee to pay the bill and the "service charge" that you charge me
to bill me, and the cost of having to issue an invoice for providing
you with this service.
Thank you for understanding. Please pay promptly upon receipt of my invoice.
Them: This is in response to your recent correspondence (which was actually my invoice) ... The $4.00 service charge includes computer processing time, personnel to program the computers, printed bill, envelopes and postage to mail the installment notices. However, the service charge also includes costs for processing the payments, as well as bank charges for the incoming charges....We do not pay service fees for providing a service. (Followed by corporate speak about striving to reduce costs and providing excellent service.)
Me: I appreciate your explanation for x’s $4.00 monthly service fee. However, the fact is, I do not receive a printed bill from x, or installment notices of any kind by mail, therefore none of the envelopes or postage or physical processing that you described is required for x to “provide this service” for which I am billed each month.
I am charging a service fee because I solely incur the expense of my time and computer processing time, bandwidth and paper and ink to download the documents you described from the internet and print them, if my documents are available online – and frequently they are not. If the documents are not available online at the time I attempt to retrieve them, I have to incur additional duplicitous time to attempt to retrieve them later, and sometimes the expense of sending an email or a making a phone call. As well, I personally, manually entered all of my contact information, identifiers and vehicle information and payment information into your system via the internet, and from time to time I also personally update this information as well without any assistance or interaction from any paid employee of x.
I appreciate that x incurs the expense of doing business and wants to recoup those expenses, so I am sure you can understand that is my only intention well. I do not believe that my monthly charge to x for my service of making a payment is any more unreasonable than x’s charge to me for accepting one. This is not a charge for “x to perform a service”, but a charge for clerical services that I am providing to service my policy at my own expense and by your own admission, am also being charged by x to perform. My monthly service fee also includes the actual cost of mailing the invoice each month. I am happy to see that we are in agreement, as I also do not pay service fees to provide a service.
x can avoid paying my service fee by waiving theirs.
I would also humbly suggest, that in your quest for “ways to reduce costs”, if x’s bank is, as you state, charging for the cost of incoming payments, then perhaps x should change banks. My bank has not yet charged me a fee for making a deposit.
Thank you for your inquiry and have a nice day.
Not sure how far this is going to get...but by the way, I did first, ask them nicely to waive the stupid fee and they refused.
Them: Recurring Card Payments charged to a credit or debit card and Electronic Funds Transfer payments made under a recurring payment plan are subject to installment fee charges. Please refer to your premium bill for installment fee details and amounts.
Me: Please explain what this fee is for?
Them: The $4.00 installment fee pays for the processing of your monthly statements and payments. The installment fee is still applicable if you are enrolled in our Paperless Billing option.
Me: Very good, thank you for your explanation.
Please be advised that effective immediately, I also charge a service
charge in the amount of $6.39 with each payment that I make. I charge
this fee to pay the bill and the "service charge" that you charge me
to bill me, and the cost of having to issue an invoice for providing
you with this service.
Thank you for understanding. Please pay promptly upon receipt of my invoice.
Them: This is in response to your recent correspondence (which was actually my invoice) ... The $4.00 service charge includes computer processing time, personnel to program the computers, printed bill, envelopes and postage to mail the installment notices. However, the service charge also includes costs for processing the payments, as well as bank charges for the incoming charges....We do not pay service fees for providing a service. (Followed by corporate speak about striving to reduce costs and providing excellent service.)
Me: I appreciate your explanation for x’s $4.00 monthly service fee. However, the fact is, I do not receive a printed bill from x, or installment notices of any kind by mail, therefore none of the envelopes or postage or physical processing that you described is required for x to “provide this service” for which I am billed each month.
I am charging a service fee because I solely incur the expense of my time and computer processing time, bandwidth and paper and ink to download the documents you described from the internet and print them, if my documents are available online – and frequently they are not. If the documents are not available online at the time I attempt to retrieve them, I have to incur additional duplicitous time to attempt to retrieve them later, and sometimes the expense of sending an email or a making a phone call. As well, I personally, manually entered all of my contact information, identifiers and vehicle information and payment information into your system via the internet, and from time to time I also personally update this information as well without any assistance or interaction from any paid employee of x.
I appreciate that x incurs the expense of doing business and wants to recoup those expenses, so I am sure you can understand that is my only intention well. I do not believe that my monthly charge to x for my service of making a payment is any more unreasonable than x’s charge to me for accepting one. This is not a charge for “x to perform a service”, but a charge for clerical services that I am providing to service my policy at my own expense and by your own admission, am also being charged by x to perform. My monthly service fee also includes the actual cost of mailing the invoice each month. I am happy to see that we are in agreement, as I also do not pay service fees to provide a service.
x can avoid paying my service fee by waiving theirs.
I would also humbly suggest, that in your quest for “ways to reduce costs”, if x’s bank is, as you state, charging for the cost of incoming payments, then perhaps x should change banks. My bank has not yet charged me a fee for making a deposit.
Thank you for your inquiry and have a nice day.
Not sure how far this is going to get...but by the way, I did first, ask them nicely to waive the stupid fee and they refused.
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