at&t does it, why not others?

I noticed that at&t is charging a "payment administrative fee." Says them, "Please be advised that payment made with a representative may be subject to an administrative fee. There is no cost to pay by mail or via an automated payment method." et cetera.

It's about time. I hope more businesses and, particularly, municipalities start adopting a similar stance. EZ Pass is the most glaring and visible opportunity. Every car or truck going through a human-operated toll booth in order to pay the road tolls should be charged a surcharge for the extra cost required to serve them. Period.

Local municipalities should do the same. If someone has to walk into an office to pay, for example, a water bill with a human being, charge them more. In all fairness -- and with a high degree of that unpopular but highly useful concept of "profiling" -- it may be kind to have a cut-off date for age. People over, for example, the age of 60 could be exempt from the extra fee.

I don't know how the psychology works on such things. Maybe it's better to offer a discount, so people feel they are able to save money and get a little extra for themselves. I don't know. I just know that I believe it's time for radical self-responsibility and that simple things like getting an EZPass should be a civic duty. You don't want one? You want to wait endlessly in line for a toll booth operator to take your $2, great, get out an extra bill. It's $3 for you. Consider it a usage tax of sorts.

You don't like it? Take responsibility and lessen your impact on "the system."

Comments

[geo]

hmmm well i take issue with the above - you buy something you need service of some sort - anyway years ago i dropped at&t because they sucked at customer service - sometimes you need to talk to somebody who is live if not for your own needs for feeling that you are alive and that customer service is there to service the customer and is not a sham - i have no problem with internet paying if its safe which i am always suspicious of but i think you shouldn't have to be penalized by a company for trying to reach them with questions about their product or service - i live in a coop in nyc and every time i write a letter asking why the landlord charged me late fees of 25 dollars when i pay on the 1st of every month religiously and then on the next months bill they added 75 dollars for legal fees on monthly statement and recently jeff pulver bought an expensive TV from best buy and tried to return it the next day or shortly after he bought it because it didn't work - and best buy refused to take it back and jeff was so pissed off he left it there with information on how to reach him and well nobody contacted him either - justice and customer service are often just-us - we the customer, the voter, the patient, are the enemy - they want us to buy into what they are selling but service is either non- existent or a joke often - the question is "what is not Propaganda"

and also i take offense to your comment of special treatment for over sixty is age-racism :-) - even though i believe we need to be more internet centric for more things and people and companies need to be more intune with the future rather then protecting their legacy -

many corporations and governments have no credit in my book and most of their actions are one sided often at the expense of we the people, the customer -

well my 2 cents to your 2 cents - people should be able to have choices not demands or commands
be well

geo

the art of living is making your life an art

[Youngblood]

Sorry. I'm not buying it, either literally or figuratively. If this kind of thinking became the norm, I'd gladly sabotage the precious "system" at every opportunity, with real joy in my heart and no regrets whatsoever.

Increasing the already overwhelming amount of mechanization in our everyday lives by penalizing those who actually want to deal with other flesh and blood people would have a chilling effect on those who desire better service and demand accountability. That may be hard to see in your EZPass scenario, but it becomes much clearer when you imagine how this approach would impact people who have billing questions, problems with a product, or simply want know why the delivery company's computerized tracking system is telling them their package is sitting three towns over when it was supposed to be delivered four days ago.

Even people who comply with the "system" have issues and questions that need to be addressed; demanding that they pay a price for the "luxury" of having them addressed is bad business.

And when the same philosophy is applied to government, the result is computerized totalitarianism -- a prison of our own tools.

No thanks. I'd rather drop a monkeywrench into the gears.

[Wes]

Jessie - As an aging Boomer who likes the Internet for most everything - except electronic accounts and paying (reluctantly with one or two exceptions at my dear spouse's urging), I too fear the loss of real jobs for real people in these customer-service-oriented roles. I do wonder what we think our vast workforce will actually be doing as we try to remove more and more of these types of jobs from people. We can't all be entrpreneurs, sales clerks, real estate agents (as if, these days), IT geeks, or administrators. Can we? Clerical jobs are being totally consumed by technology - but where does that leave our clerical-type persons in this workforce - people without the education, skills and abilities to be much more than what they have been?

Any thoughts on that?

[JessieX]

Thanks for your comment, Wes. I hold a different perspective. I believe the next round of young adults entering the workforce will demand and be perfectly suited for work other than clerical. See, the last 20 years, many of the lower rungs of work have been filled by GenX workers, who classically fill grunt jobs where they are overworked, underappreciated and underpaid. Millennials, as a peer personality, are really not oriented to sit in cubicles, isolated, doing boring work. They're peer-oriented. So new jobs will open up (be created) to support that orientation. You may not see how or why now, but count on it. You'll see it in five years for sure; it'll be considered common place /classic work in 10 years.