Letter: Liberty Utilities redefines convenience
To the community,
I paid most of my bills online (yesterday), and most companies today make paying online pretty easy, such as Southwest Gas. On the other hand, Liberty Utilities, which has been trying to tell us we need so many new utility lines and are groping for more expenses, charges a $3.50 convenience fee if you want to pay your bill on their website. They should be ashamed.
We should be charging them a “convenience” fee since they don’t have to manually answer the phone, input data, give a confirmation number, etc., when we give them a payment online.
I am not very impressed with Liberty Utilities. Their outage over the Thanksgiving weekend (Friday) on Sierra Boulevard and for miles around, was an unbelievable inconvenience and blamed on their new underground lines on Sierra Boulevard. How did we know this? Not from any information you could get from their non-info recording for sure — only by tracking down a service truck to see what the story was.
Liberty Utilities: get a grip and start learning how to “engage” with your customers, and start by accepting online payments without gouging your customers for “convenience” — which is all your.
Judi and Terry Allen, South Lake Tahoe
I don’t use their website for payment. I pay it directly through my bank’s bill-pay site. Liberty still sends me a paper bill, then I go to my bank’s site, where I have all the payment info entered, and click the amount to send. So far they haven’t charged me an extra fee for that.
If they want to play that kind of a game, play back. Or else, write a check and mail it. A 50cent stamp is a lot cheaper than a $3.50 fee! Heck with that! Liberty isn’t NEAR the quality company that NV Energy was. . . though now that NV has new ownership, they may change too.
We are mailing ours since this started. It cost to walk in to their office, to pay online,to pay by phone. The only way to not incur a fee is by snail mail or by auto payment from your account. This started about two bills ago. I am very disappointed as well!
Seems the poor, disenfranchised south shore is subsidizing the vibrant economy of the north shore on the electricity scene.
Say “no” to auto-pay! Never allow anybody automatic access to your checking account!
Just double checked my most recent bill to make sure there was no extra charge, and they’ve got the bills so full of surcharges and adjustments, it’s hard to tell. Nothing at $3.50, though. . . so, can anybody tell me how the charge is listed, so I can check the next bill to be certain?
Thanks.
Cash only if you go in ,they wont charger you 3.50 dollars extra, what a rip off they try to be, but not with me.Lets fight this,
I did a minor home renovation project and Liberty was by far the WORST utility/company/agency to deal with here in Tahoe. From my interactions with them it was clear they had zero desire to work with their customers.
I knew this fee was coming so I prepaid my bill by $400. I used to do this when they had no online access paying by check. It isn’t very customer service oriented. Maybe if we opted out of paper bills they could waive the fee?
The county charges a service fee AND 2.25% of the tax bill to pay property taxes with a credit card.
I paid my Liberty bill in person with a debit card as I do not have any credit cards. The money is supposed to be considered cash as it comes straight out of my account and I also was charged $3.50 fee. Cash is king.
I am so irritated by this. Every other bill I pay has online re-occurring credit card payments as an option. Even Placer County allows free bill pay of property taxes if you use an e-check. Liberty Utilities was already behind the times by only allowing one-time (not auto recurring payments) through their website, now they add a fee? What’s next, we’ll be required to deliver them our bill by horse and buggy?
Yes, what a rip-off! I wonder if the PUC knows they are gouging the customers for paying their bills!
I think Liberty Utilities is part of an investor owned utility, an IOU ironically enough. Bottom line profit at any costs and relatively short-term financial gain for those investors would be its one and only purpose. We better think twice about privatizing all the energy and water commons we now own and can regulate.
BB, perhaps if there was a REAL free market in energy, instead of tightly government regulated monopolies, the consumer would benefit from real competition between different producers of energy. Not to mention different sources. With government controlling who is allowed to sell which ‘government approved’ source of power, we are all limited.
Dogula, please explain that to me. How many power lines should we have running up the street? How many gas lines or sewer? Who owns the infrastructure?
I auto-pay each month for my primary residence and a rental unit I have. I have not ever been charged $3.50 for service fee and I have houses in both the county and city. While between tenants on a different house I paid online at their website and I did not incur any other fees. I just opened this months Liberty bills after reading these comments. Once again, no surcharge. The charges I am questioning are the “Distribution Charge and the Generation Charges” Isn’t that part of what they do? Not to mention the “Vegetation Management Fee” But wait! Better yet there is a feel good credit for the ECAC Amortization. (Huh)
Also to their credit, I did email them with a billing question last month and I did receive a prompt detailed reply. Of course this was after trying to call them. For fun, check out their phone menu. NOT ONE single option gives you a real person only recorded messages or a request to leave a message. Frustrating to say the least.
It is a mystery why some utility ratepayers think others should pay for their credit card airline miles, rebates, and rewards. Or for the extra collection costs of specialized, individual invoicing to one’s bank. PG&E has similar surcharges, or “convenience fees” with far worse service, worse safety record, and higher rates. If you don’t want to incur a surcharge, simply have your bank transmit payment, mail in the payment, or drop off at the Liberty office. This is not terribly complicated, or worth such unnecessary angst.
I am glad I am not the only one fed up with Liberty Energy’s inability to operate in the same fashion as a competently run private business. Add up the cost of a paper invoice, labor to process it, postage to mail it, the loss of waiting 20+ days for their money, labor to process the check and credit every customer’s account. Then compare that to <2.5% that Visa, MC, or Amex would charge to simply process the charge automatically every month and that not only answers your question Steve, but also explains why utility companies are so despised by their customers.
It is unfortunate Liberty has no concern for their level of customer service nor the competence to run a business in an efficient manner.
Steve said “simply have your bank transmit payment” That is exactly what a check is and with a debit card which is a plastic check. If I pay by paper check or plastic check the money is taken out or transmitted once the bank receives it. If they are going to charge a service for plastic debit they should also charge for paper debit. Cash is also just a piece of paper and should be charged for accordingly. A check takes time to clear yet a debit card is instant as is actual cash. This is only the beginning of company’s squeezing every possible charge or fee to pay the shareholders, union workers and other misc expenses to stay afloat in todays market. Why? Because they can.
Happy New Year, Kenny.
Check your debit card. You’ll see a little Visa or MasterCard symbol on it. Using that card costs the business a percentage of the bill, usually at least 2.5%. So it is more expensive for them to accept your debit card than a check or electronic transfer.
Just an FYI.
Liberty gives us options. When we saw the fee for paying online, we processed a bill payment via our bank’s free bill pay service. No, we don’t pay a monthly service fee to the bank for that account.
As business practices go, I hope Liberty has considered that their cash flow would improve if they eliminated the online fee. Instead of getting our electronic payment the same day, they had to wait to receive our paper payment and pay someone to process that payment and deposit. My presumption is Liberty is not so concerned about cash flow.
I would also presume Liberty has reviewed monthly expenses related to processing payments. As a business owner, it costs us more to process paper payments than to accept electronic payments. If more of us pay via paper, and Liberty’s expenses related to payments go up, they may reconsider their policy. As consumers we can help facilitate change. Or we can hope, yes?!
With utilities, we are quick to complain about high prices then we complain when the company tries to keep their expenses in check. Say Liberty does not charge the fee to pay online and instead raises our monthly rates to cover expenses. I’m sure we would understand completely, right?! Wrong.
Whether the card is issued by the bank and linked to your checking account or provided by a finance company, as the merchant we pay horrendous fees to accept your card. As business and service providers some choose to bill that fee back to the customer. Some don’t. Either way, you cannot get away from the cost of doing business while accepting plastic.
Don’t take it out on the merchant. The blame goes directly to the merchant services companies. Merchants are held hostage by their business practices. My business pays over $12,000 annually in merchant services fees. To keep my service rates competitive, we do not pass that expense along to our customers. Believe me, I’m thankful to be in business for myself, for surviving the last ten years, and providing jobs to others. That doesn’t mean it hurts any less to see that money go to some nameless, faceless corporation simply because we agree to accept plastic.
Julie, while I agree credit card fees add up for merchants, don’t forget to add up the incremental revenue merchants profit from impromptu purchases, greater spending power from cash strapped consumers, and the merchant advantaged changes in spending behavior of customers paying with plastic over cash. How many merchants would go out of business if they had to survive on only cash paying customers?
To Liberty’s slight defense, unlike regular merchants, they will not see a higher average charge or additional revenue by accepting plastic, but they will see the cost saving advantages I mentioned earlier. Liberty’s expenses would go down if they moved more customers to online payment and auto billing. The only question is, would they in turn lower our rates? Yeah right. But I would be wiling to let them keep the additional profit if they would just bill my American Express card automatically every month. Make it simple for the customer. Basic Business 101.
Are we talking about the same Liberty Utilities here? Or through some glitch in the system am I the only one not paying a processing fee? Perhaps I get the multi-home discount?
After re-reading all of the posts, I went through all of my last years Liberty bills and have not seen one single service charge regardless of what type of payment I do. I regularly auto-pay direct from my checking or use their web site to enter my checking data for withdrawal.
Hmmm, I have not yet tried cash or going to their office to pay in person.
worldcycle, try a debit card. I get that transaction fee on everything I pay over the phone with my debit card and also on electronic check transfer. Price of doing business with companies. I just sold something on ebay and had the money go into my checking as a direct deposit. The person who bought it used paypal, I do not have paypal. When I contacted paypal to transfer I was charged a user fee as was the person who bought the item. Same thing with cell phones and minutes, both users are charged minutes against their plan. I seem to be in the wrong business end for fees.