Yesterday my son's girlfriend needed to pay her AT&T cell phone bill. She doesn't have a checking account or credit card and is in-between jobs. She gave me the bill and enough cash to cover the bill so I ran it over to the AT&T store. The clerk said they had to charge $5.00 because the bill was being paid in cash. I can see giving a 5% discount if you pay by credit card or automatic deduction from your checking account but charging $5.00 to pay a bill?!

That IS an outrage!  $5 on top of the relatively low price for telephone could well be a usurious rate of interest!  Maybe you might notify your State Attorney Gneral.  Yours in Him, Deb

A charge for paying in the traditional manner seems ridiculous!! What do they think the cash is, counterfeit? Call call chairman of the board, call the president of AT&T, call the media!!!  Okay, I'll calm down.  I would  at least contact customer service and ask about their written policy regarding payment methods. Perhaps they would be willing to deduct cash payment charge since you were not aware of the charge before you went to pay the bill.

Many utility, insurance and other companies are now charging if you use a card to pay with but I have never seen  one charge extra for cash.

 

Thanks for the response so far. We have a different set up for our cell phone and I never heard of this happening either. I do plan to look into this further. I personally don't like everybody and their brother having access to all my accounts, but this is crazy. Toni

This extra charge is something that is becoming common, because cash involves more work to process than checks, which can be immediately processed now, or a debit or credit card. Someone at that AT&T store will have to make up a deposit to be taken to the bank or picked up by courior, and anything that has to be handled by humans now is going to get an extra fee tacked on. Companies don't like the cost of salaries, (even though they are tax deductible as an expense) so anything that will reduce that cost is what they will charge.  It doesn't make it right, but corporations call the shots and if we want to do business with them, you pay their fees.

Edey.

Edey, you are correct. I read the back of the bill and sure enough it does state that "An Administrative Fee may apply". Its vague and leaves it open so they can apply fees for just about anything. I was angry because this poor gal is just starting out, trying to keep her life simple and gets hit with a $5.00 on a $97.00 bill. A couple months back she had problems with an ATM that drained her account through one of those card readers that can be attached to the ATM machine.

Well, thry might charge me once, but after that they won't have my business to charge anything for. I have left banks over this and wouldn't think twice about leaving a phone company with so many others available. Why do these companies have to make things so hard for the consumer?

At one time providing good reliable service was a thing of pride for a business - if they wanted repeat customers they had to establish that reputation. That was when the population was thousands and thousands less then now. Now high profits are the only concern, and there are so many people now available to do business with companies they don't care about providing good service, if they infuriate one customer, they know that a new customer will walk in the door, someone who has fallen for the deceptive advertising the business has put out there. It comes down to this one point - service to the customer costs money and cuts profits. Anything that cuts profits has to have a fee attached or eliminated. That's big business' mode. Edey 

 That's true, Edey, but I think we've been accepting less than stellar service. If everyone would demand at least a minimum of cooperation from big business, they'd have to buckle under.