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Wow that’s bullshit
Allstate has, by far, the worst customer service I’ve ever experienced from a car insurance company. I personally will not willingly do business with them ever again.
BEWARE
Every time I called, it felt like I was on trial. It was like they were interrogating me, picking into every little detail, looking for ways to prove I owe them more money. At one point, they threatened to increase my rates because I have a parent living with me at the same address. A parent who has no license and is not physically able to get to the car without my help. They forced me to submit documentation to prove all this under threat of having to pay more for my insurance.
When I was looking at renewal, they sent me a quote that was an order of magnitude larger than what any other insurer quoted me. I ended my policy on the spot, and then had to fight to get a prorated refund from them for the remainder of my policy term. They still tried to charge me for the new policy, despite having cancelled.
And that’s not all, that’s just some of the “highlights”.
Good luck to you OP! May the suffering you are about to endure cleanse the karmic debts of your past lives.
Exactly what I expect from a company that advertises so much
Americans seem allergic to showing a simple single payable amount that the customer pays. It must be exhausting. It must be like trying to book RyanAir tickets, but with everything.
It’s exactly like that
It is exhausting. It would be nice to live somewhere with consumer protections, but shockingly those places aren’t particularly enthusiastic about taking immigrants from the US
There must be a way to pay without fee. It might be more work for you, but it’s definitely more work for them, hence the “convenience” aspect of the fee.
In the US, some citizens go to physical locations to pay fines in coins. Hundreds of dollars in coins is very inconvenient to the establishment but they have to legally accept it. Sends a clear message to them that they suck ass.
You can always mail a check, right? Isn’t that still a thing?
There must be a way to pay without fee.
According to whom? As far as I’m aware, there’s no such law in the US regarding private companies. So they can be jerks if they want to.
legal tender for all debts, public and private
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-is-a-convenience-fee-or-pay-to-pay-fee-en-2126/
They can charge fees, as long as there is an alternate way to pay without a fee. Usually it’s by check in the mail.
For insurance your bill is typically for the next month instead of the previous month like utilities. At that point it’s not a debt, so they can refuse whatever payment method they want.
Similar to how stores can refuse bills over $20 or refuse a bucket of pennies.
it’s only legal if you agreed to the fee when you first took out the debt
Which is most likely defined in their terms.
Who cares about laws if no one will enforce them? No consumer protection, no more watch dogs, it’s all but legal now.
You can mail a check but postage aint free
I would send a check, its more work for them in the end.
Changing payment methods may result in a premium increase.
Fuck them. I would be switch companies. If they try to turn a buck on shit like this, you know they’ll try to fuck you on a claim.
Best part is all these payment methods, including checks incur the same processing fees since 2006 with the Check21 regulations.
This made all transactions - debit card, check, transfer, function the same way through the same processing.
So a check genuinely costs them more - from not charging thebfee, to requiring at least some manual oversight.
Oh I didn’t know that, checks it is! Fuck these bozo’s right!?!
I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t accept checks.
Read the image. They charge a higher premium if you don’t use their auto pay.
The only way I can see around it is if you make annual payments instead of monthly. Fewer payments, less fees.
If we’re feeling petty, though, we can accept the higher premium, and send them weekly (or even daily) check payments instead of monthly. Let them process 30 transactions per month instead of just one.
Show up with a dump truck full of pennies.
Sadly nor would I but they may have to take them by gov regulation as this would be insane that you had to pay a fee to pay a fee. It counter intuitive from a normal mindset, not the mindset of a gouging insurance company. Make perfect sense to those idiot, lol
Didn’t this admin literally get rid of the ‘no extra fees’ regulation?
they may have to take them by gov regulation
🤣
If they don’t accept checks (because they can bounce) they should have to take a money order.
I don’t think the possibility of a check bouncing is a reason not to accept them as its been the primary way we pay bills for over 100 years.
But money order should be ok but they have a fee too.
It’s exactly what my father does for places. He can’t stand these fees and if whatever service he is paying has them then a check will be sent. He says it’s what hes uses to anyway since that is how he had done it most of his life.
I love that mentaility and wish I could do the same, but sadly I just want it to be known its paid right away and also since i live paycheck to paycheck waiting weeks on end for random checks to be cashed will be impossible for me to not accidentally use some of that money elsewhere.
Lots of banks will send a check on your behalf. It withdraws the money that day so you can predict it rather than when the business cashes it. And you have proof the money was sent and your bank/credit Union has a stake in the fight if the business gets shay about it.
Thanks for the tip. I will look into this. Im sure my bank does a lot of things I know nothing about.
And for 99.999% of utilities/etc there is no fee so paying online is great imo. But this is a BS money grab for the sake of being an easy money grab.
Sadly not my area. Electric is $1.50 and my water is $3.
Time to leave Allstate
You’re saving on your premium by paying automatically with a bank account. Changing payment methods may result in a premium increase.
Explain again how I’m saving on my premium? 🤔
It’s $2 vs $5 if you pay with bank.
$5 here is the premium price and $2 is the discounted price.
Maybe I’m just confused by what the word “premium” means.
Every time you make a payment you will be either
$2 with your bank $5 with other payment methods
Over a year this will result in the paying
$24 with your bank $60 with other payment methods
The increase to your premium over 1 year will be $36 by using a non bank method.
Still doesn’t explain what “premium” means. English isn’t my first language. 😁
Don’t worry about it, I’ll look it up. 👍
The premium is what you pay to the insurance company.
The monthly payment. Or some cases you pay by quarter, half or full year at a time.
glad to see that visa fees are being disclosed now. for a long time visa wouldn’t allow vendors to show the fees, and cash transactions had to cost the same as visa transactions.
It’s like 3%, which I don’t love but I like better than dealing with cash or checks.
I hope this BS leads to competition with Visa/MC. The fees they charge are ridiculous. Then you’re paying for stripe or whatever on top. A govt run system that’s not for profit would be awesome.
We did have something resembling competition, maybe a decade or so ago, with the emergence of Venmo and Cashapp and Zelle - basically just digital front-ends for e-checks between bank accounts. They all hit major stumbling blocks, in no small part thanks to how Visa/AMEX/MC conspired to freeze them out.
Capitalism abhors competition.
My Allstate account doesn’t do that. There are no payment option fees. Is there something odd about your account? Have you had missed payments or insufficient funds when paying?
The auto-pay discount for AT&T also was cut in half unless you add a bank, not a credt/debit card, and I’m an inch away from just turning off the cards and telling them all to stuff it sideways sans lube.
The fee isn’t for the payment method, it’s for “financing” the cost of the policy over six months. I’m sure that there is no fee if you pay in full.
Financing the bill is figured into the total amount. This is a processing fee
I’ve personally never seen in my own policies any kind of financing when paying monthly. It’s always been policy total / 6 = monthly payment. Then there is a modest (and yes, mildly infuriating) fee per payment. When I said the fee was the cost of financing, I didn’t mean it literally was that, but more of an “effective” cost of financing. I’d love to see someone’s policy that has a financing increase line item.
Both my policies with Progressive and Allstate offer a pay in full discount. My total premium is different depending on which option I choose
I say this with all respect; can we not use Gemini or other AI agents as “evidence.” I see your other post, and I’m not disputing your point. My own policy offers a $20 discount when paying in full (on top of avoiding monthly per-payment fees, which are $4 per payment.)
Who do you use?
Progressive. And I’ve saved enough money to finally switch to pay in full on my next policy.
Progressive has always offered a pay in full discount. It’s an amount that comes off the premium, not the transaction
Incorrect. You don’t get the auto pay discount if you pay in full. Seriously.
That is indeed mildly infuriating. Do you get the discount AND avoid fees if you auto-pay in full?
Nope. You can pay in full and not get the auto pay discount or you can auto pay and pay fees each time.
The auto pay and fees are slightly less costly than not getting the discount if you choose to pay in full.
Allstate are cunts.
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Gargle that corporate knob harder, man. Hope it tastes good.
Fees for processing payments used to be considered “a cost of doing business”. Now they’re being passed onto the consumer as the price of convenience and another profit vector for an already predatory industry.
This has to be copypasta.
Because there’s no way a real human with a real job can have these feelings, unless they were the biggest fascist pussy bootlicker the sewers have ever vomited out onto the pavement
biggest fascist pussy bootlicker the sewers have ever vomited out onto the pavement
I just learned how to tag people. I’m going to use this as their descriptor now.
Just bate
Such a fee is absolutely normal, adequate, and simply human.
Interesting take, but also not accurate. ACH / direct bank connection costs merchants a fraction of a cent to use. Additionally even bank cards that are more expensive likely don’t exceed $1 in fees for such a transaction.
The merchant in this case is likely taking in more money than necessary to cover transaction costs i.e. they are making money on you paying them money (which is not normal, nor adequate).
Domestic transactions in my country have zero fees. Because it’s a fully computerised system. Because we live in the year 2026. Catch up.
If there’s an unavoidable fee for processing, it needs to be included in the initially advertised price of whatever you’re purchasing. In this case, the price should have been set $2 higher and the bank account fee should be $0. Otherwise it is just false advertising, since you cannot actually receive the service for the initially advertised price.
Why should I have to pay a fee for YOU to take my money? Do you not want my money?
I want to pay for services rendered at an agreed upon price. If you want my money for those services, then it’s on you to pay those fees. End of story.
And why is that “mildly infuriating”?
Charging a fee to accept payment is ridiculous. If a cost is unavoidable then it should be included in the price.
I accept that some payment providers charge more than others but there should be at least one that is free even if that means adding the cost of the cheapest one to the base price.
Ideally they would all be free and you’d just add the average cost of payment processing to the price.
There was a time in the UK when you could get a flight from Manchester to London for £8 but the final price ended up being ten times that due to additional costs that weren’t optional.
I can usually pay in 5 different ways (including bank transfer) here in Germany and 0 of them cost anything.
I believe you should be grateful instead these exists
Omg, it’s That One Guy! Can’t believe I found one in the wilds of Lemmy.
To be fair those are some serious fees, and usually the seller eats some of it.
People like you are responsible for the word “retard” making a comeback.
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So is Google pay?
It’s actually probably because Apple gets a cut, and so does the issuing card. In apples case, mastercard
So is Google pay?
It’s actually probably because Apple gets a cut, and so does the issuing card. In apples case, mastercard
