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Automatic pay option

I called and set up auto pay back in August. I missed my Sept payment because I was under the assumption that auto pay would have taken care of it. Now I have incurred late penalty fees. Please explain why it takes so many weeks to process, when other companies such as my electric company and cell phone company took just a few days to process.

Please explain!

Comments

spamsickle

I just heard on NPR that Verizon is planning to charge people like me who pay without the "automatic pay option" an additional $3 per month. Sounds like that will be cheaper than letting them charge me for their own failure, but I think I'm going to be taking a hard look at the competition. "Pay to pay" is idiotic.

lasagna

This is a peer to peer forum ... it looks like your question requires someone from Verizon's Billing Department to answer your question. Follow he "Contact Us" link on this page and give them a ring.

It does say that you should continue to pay your bill normally until you receive a bill which says that "Auto Pay" has been activated for the account and that it will taken automatically. If you received such a bill, then I would simply calling the billing folks and get them to remove any fees which were imposed.

From personal experience, I recently re-activated auto-pay (it had stopped a few months ago as a result of a service change -- although it shouldn't have -- and I never got around to re-activating it). I did so only about 2 weeks ago -- and just yesterday received an email saying that my monthly payment had been automatically applied (I was just about ready to go in an manually pay it online). So maybe, they're getting better at it ... or perhaps there is a problem with your account setup (I did my autopay setup online and not via the telephone -- less chance of numbers being incorrectly recorded).

lasagna

On the $3 charge ... read carefully. They are going to charge that fee ONLY if you choose to use a credit card to pay your bill. This is to offset the additional fees that the card providers (Visa, etc.) tack onto any credit card transaction. If you pay online using an EFT / Checking account as the payment source account, you won't be charged a fee. I, too, initially read that as a $3 fee for all payments -- which I would agree would be idiotic.

spamsickle

Hmmm, I didn't read it, just heard it on NPR. I always draw against my checking account, so I guess I may skate by this one.

lasagna

Directly from Verizon's Bill Payment page (note specific reference to auto pay or one-time payments with a bank account):

Important: In approximately 30-60 days, payments made using a credit/debit/ATM card will be processed by a vendor. The vendor will assess a convenience fee of $3.50 for each payment made. To avoid incurring a fee, we encourage you to enroll in Auto Pay or make your one-time payments on Verizon.com using a bank account.

BurtReynolds

This is still ridiculous. So they add a fee and basically blame a vendor? Why did they pick the vendor then? Just because some VP picked the wrong vendor shouldn't mean higher prices or inconvenience for customers. It is just another slap in the face to customers while VZ acts like they are powerless to stop it.

lasagna

So ... all those other payments you make online ... you pay those with a credit card? Likely not. In fact, it's probably not even an option. My power bill, my mortgage, my credit cards, all of those take one and only one form of payment -- a checking account.

So, Verizon says for the convenience of paying with a credit card, you pay a fee. Those who want to use the more expensive method of paying their bill, burden the cost -- no the rest of the customers who pay with a checking account. If you want to use the same method that you use for every other account relationship -- a checking account -- it remains free and no cost like one would expect.

Of course, they could also say that they're going to stop taking credit cards altogether for account payment. But then everyone would be on here whining about that too ...

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