The bigger question that needs to be asked is. ARE you charged $5 to pay your bill????????

You are never charged for paying your bill, either in the store, online, over the phone, kiosk, you are never charged a fee to pay your bill.

justmarried said:
You are never charged for paying your bill, either in the store, online, over the phone, kiosk, you are never charged a fee to pay your bill.

Wrong. You are charged if you pay at the store counter versus the machine. This fee can be waived in obviously special cases (i.e. the machine is broken).

Also, some independant agents charge their own fees.

now that's just silly.....really?

ya it's true, but why wait in line to pay a bill when a machine is there to take you in less than a minute.

What corporate store are you going to that charges a fee to pay your bill? I've been looking at the exact same bill payment screen for five years and there's no possible place to add a fee to your bill.

Most indirects in this area DO DO DO charge a fee to pay the bill. Remember, indirects work on commission. They primarily (not all) won't help you much unless you're making them money somehow. When you come pay your bill at my store, you're paying Verizon, who pays my paycheck. Why would I need to charge more?

epik you need to get out more. AT&T does charge $5.00 if you need/want to pay with the help of a human.

As for the slam at indirects, are out of your mind? The only leg we have up on the corp and internet stores is personal service. I would think most indirects are like the one I work in, and bust our butts to get and keep our customers. In this day and age it too damn hard if you don't.

I might come as a surprise but there are other companies out there besides Big Red.

Work on commission is the reason I charge a fee?

I make... .30 on a bill payment (and only if we actually have enough sales to break guaranteed for that week anyway) The fee is from datascape, not from the retailer. when we had to use datascape directly (instead of our POS system) it would STILL prompt us for the extra 3 dollars. There is no way around that fee, and it cannot be waived. If I pay my bill in my own store I have to pay the $3 fee.

And indirects do work on commission, this much is true, but the ONLY thing we have going for us is our customer service. We can't directly waive activation fees, we can't replace defective phones in the store (unless they purchased from us) we don't have authorized tech centers so we can't v...
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Good post

Agreed, although I'm not sure where .30 comes in. The fee that datascape charges us is .75 per bill payment. He is correct in that we have no choice in the matter. We're going to get charged .75 no matter what. Also the receipt from Datascape automatically places the $3 fee on there. I do charge $3, but I could charge whatever I want. At $3 though we make $2.25 per bill payment. Actually probably averages out a little less because there are the rare occasions where we don't make people pay the fee at all.

I'm still trying to get over the fact that if someone comes into (some of) your stores, they are charged a FEE to pay their bill. If anybody did that to me, they'd never see me again. I only deal with one local, corp Verizon store (for a myriad of reasons) and, if anything, they are waiving fees for things, certainly not charging them. I'm stumped.

I work at an indirect retailer also and we HAVE to charge that fee. We may not like it but we are charged to post the payment.

Ok. Here it is as plain and simple as I can make it. The system that indirects use to make VZW payments charges the indirect agent 75 cents per transaction. This agent gets zero hourly compensation from Verizon Wireless. So, as any corporation, they must make money to stay in business. They cannot lose 75 cents per customer that is paying Verizon. Remember, they are NOT paying the agent...that money goes to Verizon Wireless. So, to keep a door front open, the agent must (I know this a tough concept) make MONEY. This is not because someone is an evil money hungry blood sucking demon. It is because Capitalism is about making a profit...not being charities.

Hope this clarifies everything for you. I know a company making a profit is a...
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We are a retailer and we have a $3 fee that verizon charges us to use datascape.

If you go to a corp store or pay online/over the phone/at a machine, there is no fee. But if you go to a retailer and they take payments, there will be some fee (unless they are eating the cost for some reason)

Mycool you are wrong....really wrong. No corporate location will charge to pay your bill. If you are being charged to pay your bill with a human, you are being taken for a ride...or it is a indirect agent.