What spark240 said. I wasn’t saying it was fair or not, just how it was justified to us.
And as I said, your getting shaked down by your county as well.
Read the snopes article here, which explains the definition of legal tender, and that merchants do not necessarily have to accept currency or coins for all transactions.
Thus the point about bottom lines.
They do accept it in this case. The issue is the assessment of an additional charge.
“Legal tender is the default method,” the linked piece says, unless otherwise specified by contract. So if the bill amount is $X, I should be able to pay with exactly $X in cash, unless the contract specifies otherwise–as Giles said toward the top.
Right, and no doubt the convenience charge is specified in the contract.
Here in the UK the concept of “legal tender” is often misunderstood.
From the Royal Mint:
There are also rules about how much you can pay with specific coins - i.e. you can’t roll up to court with a wheelbarrow full of 1p coins to pay off a £5000 debt (in fact you’re limited to 20p if you us 1p coins).
Which, if you ever read your cell phone contract, mentions convenience fees.
IANAL, but what effect does refusal to accept payment have on a debt?
I get my cell phone bill for $100. I hie myself to the AT&T store with five twenties. When I offer the money to the clerk and she says, “That will be $5 more as a convenience charge” and I refuse to pay any more than the amount on the bill, does the clerk accepting “partial” payment discharge the debt in full?
I wouldn’t pay the extra fiver. I owe the amount on the bill, and unless the contract says they charge extra for cash, I care less than nothing at all what is convenient or cheap for AT&T - if they contracted with me to render me cell phone services at a given amount per month (or whatever) then they don’t get to jack the bill up after the fact. That would be a violation of the good-faith contract.
Regards,
Shodan
No doubt? You’re very trusting.
Mine mentions some other fees, but not a penalty for paying in cash.
So I’d suggest to the OP’s cousin that he read his contract very carefully and see what it does say.
Whew! For a moment there I expected the end of that sentence to read “they want to eliminate the breathing body altogether.”
According to the AT&T website:
$5 charge must be due to inflation.
I guess they’d rather pay the 3% charge from the credit card company.
The fact that they refer to it as “In Person Payment” underscores that this is not about paying via cash (versus check or credit card), but about paying in person, thereby requiring the services of a living, breathing human being who requires a paycheck. If you want to pay in person, you get to help cover that agent’s paycheck.
Moreover, in-person payments are typically conducted at a retail store in a strip mall sitting on a high-dollar piece of real estate, as opposed to some mail-receiving center in a pole barn on the outskirts of Zap, North Dakota. If you want to pay in person at the strip mall down the road from your house, , you get to help pay the property tax on that real estate, and the upkeep on that nice-looking retail store.
The $1 fee might be for any in person payment. I don’t understand the additional $4 for cash but it is there (according to him).
They very well might.
Handling cash carries its own costs, and while they’re less explicit than a fee paid to the credit card company they’re no less real. It would not surprise me to discover that credit cards cost AT&T less in the long run, and that they would in fact prefer their customers to pay that way.
I wonder if the friend in the OP didn’t visit an actual AT&T-owned and -operated store but instead one of the ones that resells AT&T phones. Perhaps they charge more than the one-dollar fee that AT&T stores do?
Good point, one that is often forgotten. Cash has costs too, just like CC.
Wallenstein also brings up a good (altho UK centric ) point about what “legal tender” is. The idea, in the USA, is to prevent Financial inst or other levels of government from insisting upon gold bars, Euros or something other than dollars/USD. However, the Treasury has never had to write laws or regs on this, as other than the odd wierdo wanting to pay in a dump-truck of pennies, there’s few dudes refusing USD.
In this case, they are not refusing USD, just tacking on a few buck to cover the cost of real-live person taking your $, it being counted, deposited, etc, etc.
Annoying as all hell, but not illegal. Of course, AT&T is known for pretty terrible cust service anyway, and now that they no longer have the iPhone monopoly, I expect customers to leave in droves.
I work for AT&T in a call center.
The way I understand it, the $5 fee is not for paying cash; it is an administration fee if you pay a rep in the store or a rep on the phone. There are self-pay kiosks in the stores and self-service options (*PAY, the automated voice system, att.com) that are free.
This seems to be the trend, unfortunately. I have a couple credit card accounts (Fashion Bug & Blair) that charge me ***$10 ***if I make a payment with a phone rep!!!
Do I agree with it? Hell no, I think the customer deserves interaction with a live person at no extra charge if they want it. But they didn’t ask my opinion.
This would be my guess. There are corporate stores, franchise stores and resellers. Franchises are not outwardly distinguishable from corporate stores. They say AT&T on the door and sell nothing but AT&T products and services. Resellers are places like Radio Shack and Best Buy, who offer phones and service plans from multiple providers.
I know for a fact that I can pay my Sprint bill at a corporate store with no additional charge and that a franchise will charge me $5 to do so. I’m not sure if any or all resellers are capable of accepting monthly bill payments, but I’m willing to bet that they charge for the service if they provide it.