Funny that Jeff Nolan experienced problems this afternoon trying to set up credit card auto-pay on his PG&E account. I did with Verizon.
The legacy GTE part of Verizon which provides local phone service, till 6 months ago, did not allow credit card payments on-line. You had to go into one of their stores to pay by card. Then they only allowed you to pay one month on-line at a time. Today, I notice they allow recurring pays. So 3 tries later I finally get in and it takes about 6 screens (including your agreement to forego paper bills) to get to the card set up. Finally it takes, but message reads - may take up 60 days, so keep paying as usual. The email confirmation contradicts that and says it may take 30-45 days. This is a technology company?
In meantime, my electric utility Tampa Electric, wants you to pay $ 4.95 each time you use a credit card.
You think with their bulk, they could negotiate their credit card fees down to be cheaper than the paper and labor and real estate cost of receiving checks in mail or at a payment location. And when they do start accepting cards on-line, there is a whole ecosystem of charge processors and payment software and SaaS they could leverage. So the user experience could be better.
Can you imagine how much worse it likely is, when they have to pay you?
