You might want to investigate fees from other banks. I have been paying with E checks for a long time for no charge.
Even considering the credit card fees, my cell and internet gives me a discount on the service if I prepay for the month with a credit card. Apparently this saves them from chasing people who don’t pay.
My county charges extra for credit card payments for taxes and permits.
It was a dark and stormy night in the early 70s when I got a ticket for doing 80 mph on the San Francisco Bay Bridge on my Vespa. There was no traffic because it was around 2 am and I didn’t see the cop come up behind me. I went to court and showed the judge the Vespa 200 owners manual where it said the top speed of the scooter was 68 mph with driver in the prone position. Case dismissed! The Vespa had a few enhancements so I may have been doing 80.
No traffice ticket but the County sure drove one over on us…
A few years back our county had a very messed system to charge and account for the water and sewer fees. They came up with a new computerized system and went to great lengths to explain that the new system would be sending bills out once a month rather than the old system of every other month (if they did not mess up…).
So much hullaballoo about how great the new system would be the bill would be easier to read, you could better plan your monthly expenses, and so forth…
The one thing they stressed was the water bill was not going to go up due to any increase in the cost of the water, the cost per hundred cubic feet would remain the same, and the cost for the sewage would also remain the same…
What no one realized from all this double speak was there are charges based solely on issuing the bill, charges that you have to pay even if you were out of town and used no water or sewage…
The water meter fee ($4.00) and all the other little fees would now be coming twice as often, monthly, 12-times a year instead of every other month (6-times a year…).
Funny though, I use the same amount of water and sewage, but the “no-increase” now cost us $30 a year more…
Yeah, we got took with that one…
Towns in MA and NH have in their budget the amount of money their police are to collect from tickets. And in many cases this goes up every year. Counter productive because the goal of every town should be to have people driving safely so there are no tickets.
Length of tickets on a record is different in each state. The worse the crime (DUI) stay on longer.
The municipality charges that $1 convenience fee no matter what bank one uses for his e-check.
Those fees are nuts. Compare the cost for electronic payments to staffing an office to handle mail and in person payments. You should get a discount.
Same here but the town uses an online service to do the collections. They are the ones charging the $0.95 fee for ACH payments. They have to get paid somehow and that’s a small price to pay for the convenience. The credit card fee is similar to what VDCdriver indicated and outrageous amount if you’re paying a property tax bill for example. I love the convenience, we can do most transactions online including vehicle registrations, pet licensing, property taxes etc.
+1
When you click on “pay my tax/water/sewer bill online”, residents are re-directed to the website of the company that performs the collection service for the municipality. Given the combined cost of postage, an envelope, and the gas necessary to drive the payment to the post office, I think that a $1 “convenience fee” is reasonable. However, there is no way that I would pay the 4 1/2% fee for paying my municipal bills with a credit card.
Absolutely agree! For my county water bill, I use ACH; No charge. For my property taxes or car registration or building permits, I can do bank transfers for free to the county or pay with a credit card for a fee… not sure the percentage.
Like Texas posted… it SAVES them money… but if they farmed it out to a contracted service. That is who is getting the money. Great moneymaker for the service, not so great for the county residents.
I finally just went with the auto pay option on most everything except car insurance and property tax which is all just twice a year. You just don’t know what they deducted unless checking the bank account. Except for the water/sewer bill which is normally about $60. They mail the statement ahead of time with “auto pay” in the amount due field. Seems kinda silly doing both but most times they send out public updates with the bill. But yeah, the fixed hook up charges are rising rising all the time. Always have to upgrade the wells and sanitation.
I’m not against paying my share but the employees all got a 7.5% raise. They do it every economic down turn instead of sucking it up like me.
Credit card companies take something on the order of a 2-4% (ish) cut on all transactions. So what’s surprising is that a lot of places don’t charge an extra few percent for using a card. Though I’m sure it’s built in in some way, and it’s part of the basis for lower cash prices at gas stations if you still have anyplace that does that. I also go with the e-check to avoid it, but there’s a basis for it.
Wowwwwww…
Oregon requires that all lanes of traffic stop for a school bus, even a 4 lane road. Washington requires only traffic in the same direction as the bus to stop. What’s so “Wowwww” about that?
It might have been nice for the officer to give me a warning, but ignorance of the law is no excuse so I paid the ticket without complaint.
If you’ve ever watched a bunch of kids get off a school bus, they run everywhere. It would be a mistake to expect laws will take the place of common sense. Regardless of what the local laws are, the idea is to not run down a bunch of kids. Kids run across four lanes to get to the other side. Of course all seven year olds stop, look, and listen before crossing. (Sarc)
In VA (and IIRC, NY) the 4-lane rule only applies if there’s no structural divider - concrete dividers, or even curbed medians I think. So there’s an “in between” kind of law.
As far as traffic tickets that weren’t dismissed? Probably about 20 years.
Certainly. And just as certainly you don’t stop in the middle of the road when you are not supposed to.
Let’s be clear. In WA (where I spent most of my life), we don’t stop opposing traffic when there’s a turn lane.
However, it seems some here have an issue with not stopping for a bus across the street.
Right. I was agreeing with you that it’s not nearly as black-and-white as some would like to think.
And right again. In many (most?) states, it is also illegal to just stop in the middle of the road unless required to do so for some reason. It’s illegal in VA, anyway.
Well apologies to you. Said wowwww goes instead to the idiot legislature of the State of Washington, for putting in danger the lives of any pupils who must cross the street to get home after exiting a school bus in that state.
In the situations where oncoming traffic doesn’t stop, the students wouldn’t be crossing the street. There would be another bus going the opposite direction for those students.
Students are not allowed to cross the road in those places.
