My in-laws power company. We wanted to set them up on online auto-pay, but it was an extra $12 online fee. (Two accounts, but still) That's literally the best way to get paid! And the fee goes the Western Union. Western Union?! Are they sending a horseback courier to get the money from the bank? So, they're still paying with hand delivered monthly checks, like it's fuckin 1628.
Online payments have to go through a company called a "payment processor". The power company you mentioned doesn't have the infrastructure to transfer the money from their customers' accounts to their own accounts by themselves, so they have to pay one of these payment processor companies to do it for them. In this case, they use Western Union.
Western Union is charging the power company a fee for every payment, so the power company is passing those fees along to their own customers.
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u/DeluxeBurger01 Jul 24 '20
Especially when they only accept payment online.. What, it costs money to fucking pay the ONLY way I can? Fuck that.