Company charging me for paying them

Can u beleive it? I have been with State Farm for over ten years. I have them take my auto insur payment out of my bank account monthly.

I just got my “Notice of payment due” which only comes when there is a change in the monthly payment. It has a $1 Service charge added to the monthly “Amount due”. A blue insert came with it saying:

“Due to costs associated with providing the State Farm Payment Plan, your service charge has changed effective with this bill.”(note that word changed, it means added, since this is first time a service charge has ever been assessed) “For nearly 40 years … bla bla bla …If you would like to change your service plan please contact your State Farm agent.”

“$1 Option – This is the Pre-Authorized Payment Plan. Your payment will be automatically withdrawn from an account you choose. There are no checks to write and nothing to mail…bla bla bla…”

“$2 Option” – I will save space and just say this is the same as above, except that they will send a paper bill every month indicating what will be withdrawn from my account. This is just like all my other automatic plans, ie Electric power, water, phone, credit card. My mortgage company sends a bill whenever payment withdrawn will change. NONE charge a service fee.

“$3 Option” – This is for people who pay by mailing a check.

So, all State Farm customers are being assessed a Service Charge. We are paying them a fee for paying them for insurance. Will they do this for my home insurance too?? Can I charge them a fee for providing me insurance??

This sucks.

Well, you could just get rid of your car. Otherwise you’re stuck.

I’m just sayin’.

I should probably mention that I also have State Farm. I pay them semi-annually. They don’t charge me any service fees.

Watch your mail. BTW: What state u live in? Maybe just us FL customers will get this.

Just a pet peeve, but after all, this is the Pit.

In front of the letter “u” is a “y” and an “o.” All three of these letters spell “you.”

Just thought I’d point that out.

I haven’t received such a letter yet (I’ve been with SF for a while: my auto, life and renter’s insurance are through them). My deduction in Feb was also the normal amount. I’m in TN.

I’ll watch my mail. If I do start getting charged $1 for them to take my money out of my bank account, I’ll probably look at switching insurance companies when I move in May (likely out of state, but I don’t know yet).

U understood what I ment, so I rest my case.

Perhaps you should take your business to a competitor?

The point is that, while we understood what you meant, abbreviations such as ‘u’ for ‘you’ are fucking annoying.

I rest my case.

to u 2 and who else??

Cursing is rude, I m sure ur mother told u !

Cursing is rude. “U” is uneducated. Type like you are smart and you’ll get on much better around here. The best thing about this board are the people who type like they’ve actually taken an English class.

That’s how it is around here. Misspellings we can forgive, grammatical errors—well, we all do them. Some people get more uptight than others, but the fact is, most of us make inadvertent errors and we don’t do it deliberately. As long as the error is not so bad as to make the message incomprehensible, no big deal.

But to deliberately (out of “cuteness” or laziness) to spell “you” as “u,” or “for” as “4” or “meant” as “ment,” is annoying. And we know it is deliberate. Continue to use these little “cute” abbreviations if you wish, but don’t expect that I’ll be the last one to point them out.

u for “you”, r for “are”, and the like are incredibly annoying to me. It doesn’t take that much more effort to spell out the entire word, and it makes you look about three times smarter.

Besides, once you start using ‘u’ and ‘r’, that’s one small step away from substituting @ or 4 for the letter A, 0 for O, |< for K.

Not even Albert Einstein would have been taken seriously if he had tried to publish a paper on “T3H TH30rY 0f R3|4T1v1TY”

And back to the subject of the OP, State Farm here in Ohio has always charged $1.00 a month if you paid monthly, and an extra $2.00 if you pay quarterly. Paying semi-annually does not cost extra. And if you are on the quarterly plan, you can always pay for the entire next six months and not owe any extra fee.

I’ve had my auto insurance with State Farm for over two years, and I have always paid the $1.00 fee per month to have them automatically deduct from my bank account. It’s a service fee, not a big deal in my opinion. Many utility companies charge for Automatic Recurring Withdrawls, some charge “extra” if you pay by phone, some charge what they call “convenience fees” for the privilege of paying online.
It does cost them some change to process the withdrawl. You are paying them for the ability to not have to remember to mail the payment out on time, the cost of a stamp, &c. Does it cost a dollar? No, more like .50C.
Did you know, in Minnesota, your employer can charge you a dollar per payroll check to deduct child support? The time spent doing the deduction and cost of mailing (or doing ARW with the state)… it adds up.

Convenience. Nickel and diming you to death since… forever.

American Express charged me $2 to pay over the counter and boy did I whinge because the bill for the month had been only $18.30. I thought it was a low trick when they charged me the next month. Bastards.

Now I pay electronically via internet banking.

I m not trying to be cute. I m lazy. If u have a problem with this, well I m too lazy to invite u outside. I use ment all the time. I do not even know the difference between ment and meant, so maybe u will forgive that.

2 layzee 2 reed every1 else’s feelingz about the way u speel 2, I guess ?

G, let’s awl dew this ! Let’s awl speel like this on porpoise! It’s sew Kute! It’s so much EZ’r 2 reed !

And it leeves such a good mpreshun 2 !
:smiley:

Oddly enough, I have to think harder to substitute things like ‘u’ for ‘you’. The pity is, you can’t just plonk somebody here like you can on usenet - the code doesn’t allow it.

On a tangential, partially on-topic note, Seafirst bank (now bought out by Bank of America) used to charge $1 for all transactions that took place at the windows. You could do anything you wanted to electronically, but if you had a problem that required a human to help you, you paid extra for it. When it was very possibly their error in the first place.

I hated that.

im 2 lazi 2 tipe paul’smars, so insted ill just tipe unedumacateddumazz

may b there chargin u mor becuz they haf 2 spend xtra muny 4 a translatur 2 reed wut u rite