Power company recently outsourced their payment system and now have to pay a fuckin’ fee to pay my goddamned bill. The only way to avoid that is autopay.

Further infuriating is I have to re-add my bank info to yet another third party system.

Fuck the modern world, man.

  • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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    18 hours ago

    The problem here is that your bill is based on usage so there’s no way to know exactly what your bill will be each month in order to set up an automatic bill pay.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      My variable (usage-based) utility bills are sent as “e-bills” to my bank, so the bank’s bill pay system can pay them anyway. I can even set it up to pay in full up to some limit, so it doesn’t blindly pay if the bill is outrageous due to some mistake.

    • x00z@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      The power companies in my country use a monthly average of the yearly costs. You’ll always pay the same.

      • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Where I live in the states, my power company offers an option to do the same thing. And every year, they adjust it based on overages/underages from the previous year.

        • x00z@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          Yep exactly. It works pretty nice here. Except for a power crisis we had a few years ago, where they had to change stuff of contracts around because the price went up by almost 300%

      • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
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        17 hours ago

        Until they realize the average wasent enough and hand you a massive bill at the end of the year.

        • x00z@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          My country has rules and regulations to prevent this. The averages are pretty accurate. Our government also requires electricity companies to offer an easy way for customers to see how much energy they have used and how close it is to the estimated average.

          Anyways, we also have variable contracts where you pay monthly for the energy you have used depending on your use and the price of energy on the market. For this we can simply use payment mandates that are easy to setup between yourself, the bank and the company. Keep in mind our companies are not capitalistic overlords and don’t try to steal our money using this, so it’s pretty safe and easy.

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          LOL, no. Are you just making up hypothetical scenarios? FFS, even our crappy, private power company doesn’t pull that shit, even in Florida.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        We have this in Florida. Haven’t signed on as I’m continually trying to slash my bill, get more eco friendly.