Holy Quest
Qwest is going to lose my business due to a $1.00 convenience fee. I pay my bill online normally scheduled on the due date. I usually pay using a credit card that I rotate from time to time so that the card remains active – I have one that shows a credit “profile” that I can view if I use it once every 60 days. Since I don’t have a balance on it, that’s how I keep it active. This month they implemented a $1.00 convenience fee unless I sign up for auto pay. No way am I setting up auto pay. I don’t trust them not to screw it up. I don’t trust that something else might not happen to the account that will cause the price jump through the roof one month and I don’t trust myself to not get lazy and let an auto bill start a cascade of overdrafts and fees. It’s happened before. How about the guy with the million dollar water bill or the couple with their tens of thousands of dollars in roaming fees on their iPhones because the iPhone checks your email even when it’s turned off? Or how about the over $14,000 my ex-wife ran up in long distance in one month? Auto pay, no mufugging way. The payment is processed the same whether I schedule the bill or they do so why to they want to charge me to schedule it when I want? It doesn’t matter. I’m going to be costing them much more than $1.00 per month. I’m going to be paying the bill by check. They have to open it and process it – that is when I don’t use the walk in service and take up more than a dollar of their time or when I call customer service to complain regularly about the fee. Then I set up my account to paper bill.
But the $1.00 convenience fee is the final straw. I haven’t upgraded my personal internet speed since I went to DSL – I’m still surfing at 256k. Any upgrade offers Qwest has had include making a deal with the devil company itself, Microsoft. To get a discount from Qwest one must use MSN as the ISP. The only thing worse would be getting my internet service from Enron or Haliburton. I am not sending a dime more than absolutely necessary to Microsoft. $1.00 has broken my inertia. I talked to the cable company about internet and phone service. I’m going to save about $5.00 per month. And my internet speed will go up to 6mbs. That’s about 24 times the current speed with a $60 annual savings. Qwest, this is the last straw. And it only took $1.00.
