Verizon Wireless Confirms $2 Fee for Making One-Time Payments

This is just Verizon's way of "passing the buck". They have to pay a fee in order to accept credit cards, and are passing that fee on to the consumer. That is wrong. In fact, both Mastercard and Visa have in their merchant contracts that they can offer a discount for cash, but can not charge a fee to use a credit card. (http://www.merchantcouncil.org/merchant-acco unt/operation/pass-fee-customer.php) I'm sure Verizon will get around this by making sure they call it something else since you don't get charged a surcharge for paying by credit card in person.

So my choices are Auto-Pay or ACH, neither of which is something I will do. I prefer to know ever bill that comes through and pay for it myself, when I want to. If something has caused me to have a financial problem, I want to be able to pay my bill how I want to, not how they want me to. And I trust no organization to have access to my banking information through ACH. It is my personal preference and I shouldn't have to give that information in order to save a buck.

If you look at the choices that Verizon offers, it looks strange. They will charge me the fee unless I get set up with auto-draft. Even on auto-draft, if I use my credit card, they have to pay the fee, so what's the difference?