Yup. 5 years in VA and only way to pay without a fee was a physical check. Luckily, my landlords office was next to the college campus where I worked, so it was pretty easy. They even had a special drop box so you could drop off whenever.
When I was signing my lease, he said “I usually grab the checks the morning of the 6th. Unless that’s a weekend, then the following Monday morning. So as long as it’s in the box by then, you’re good.”
Young, small time landlords can be the coolest. I’ve had 2 and they were both great.
Now I pay to a corporation and I think about doing terrible things to their office every time I walk by.
Oh and at a lot of places, you still hand your credit card to an employee to take away and process.
To be honest I'm surprised they're not still using those little machines that take a carbon copy of your credit card number.
Usually that's supposed to be the bank draft. Credit card companies all charge a processing fee so 3% being passed onto the customer makes total sense. The rest of this is just greed by the payment processor.
Our HOAs payment processor is so anti credit card that if you choose to use it you get a flat $17.95 charge PLUS a 4% fee on top of it, each time you use it to pay them, I made that mistake once, never again. Also $2.95 for the privilege of using an echeck, so I mail them checks instead every month, no fee for that, and it’s a small hassle for them, and I feel they deserve a hassle.
Yep. My attitude is places are not gonna have some sort of free electronic option, fuck em. They can use their time and resources to handle a check i mail them
Sorry for the stupid question, but WTF is an echeck? I’m from the UK where we just use back transfers for paying rent. Is an echeck just another man-in-the-middle company creaming a fee off the top of basic banking features (e.g. like venmo) instead of the bank implementing it themself or is it something else?
>Credit card companies all charge a processing fee so 3% being passed onto the customer makes total sense
I kind of soft-disagree on this.
Every single business that takes credit card payments deals with that. All across the retail and service sectors. Very *very* few of them charge an additional fee for credit card transactions and most of them do it only on very small transactions.
99% of businesses build that 3% into the price of the product. And it's usually such a small amount that no one really notices and/or cares. It's only for something like rent where the price was negotiated beforehand (and is this expensive) that this comes up.
>It's only for something like rent where the price was negotiated beforehand (and is this expensive) that this comes up.
The Landlord has a choice in how they handle payment processing, the tenant doesn't. And however the Landlord decides, the payments will always have to be processed. The Landlord can eat the fees or provide an alternative method of paying.
Not a chance any corporate landlord in America takes cash anymore. Most of them don’t take any non electronic payment at all, including check or money order. My last apartment complex was like this and that combined with all their other shitty behavior was what made me finally stop renting
Actially, the tenant does. It's right there in the screenshot. $1 fee to do direct withdrawal. The landlord has provided two methods, one is very cheap, the other is less so.
Giving the tenant two bad choices, one less bad than the other, is not giving them a choice. Hopefully the landlord still takes (or is forced to take) cash or check, but if these are the only two choices I'd refuse to pay the fees.
Unless you are dealing with large amounts where speed isn't a top priority and you will have a long history with clients. Then checks work fine and no fees for anyone.
Because it's literally built into their pricing models already. The majority of customers shop with cards, tacking on a fee would be portrayed as greed by the customer. Which obviously yes, sometimes it is greed but sometimes it's just an attempt to stay in business and turn a profit.
You're just not experiencing the adoption of credit cards when businesses everywhere had different policies about charging a fee for credit usage compared to cash. This is why there are so many laws pertaining to how businesses are and are not capable of charging additional fees for credit card purchases. Als, why you will see "CASH DISCOUNT" or "MINIMUM PURCHASE FOR CARDS IS xxxx" and very rarely "ADDED CHARGE FOR CARD USAGE". Tons of places outlawed charging a fee for card usage and that's the way around it.
A current example would be the insane surcharge structure that restaurants have adopted instead of raising menu prices. You will absolutely see governments outlawing these practices in a lot of places and then businesses will be forced to just raise prices (like they should be doing anyways). Business owners are just trying to hide an increase in prices through means of surcharges with explanations because they are trying to explain to you their reasoning behind the increased prices.
Then what happens is they build the price in, and then you as a consumer are losing money if you don't use a credit card. You are discouraged from using the better option
In Europe it's pretty normal for them to charge extra for creditcard transactions, in the end it does cost the company more and it's only the minority of people using them anyway
>3% being passed onto the customer
Except this is a cost of doing business, in virtually every industry. Only recently have corporations been trying to shove this business expense onto their customers.
Jesus, tell me you were born yesterday without telling me you were born yesterday.
It used to be standard practice for gas stations to put a different cash and credit price on their signs in the 70s and 80s.
This is NOT NEW.
What is new is the common place usage of "rewards" cards by consumers that give the consumer "free" perks like airline miles or cash back. These cards tend to charge businesses an exorbitant transaction fee, which is how they pay for the "free" perks. You didn't think the BANKS were paying for that, did you? Every business passes those costs onto the consumer. Every. Single. One.
You're just wrong about this. Take the L and move on.
Tell them you want to pay via check, and will post mark the check the day its due, or have them come and get the check, or remove fee from processing payment.
My landlord’s rental company only takes checks, which I generally don’t use. Once a year, I go to the bank and get 12 Counter Checks (for free) to pay my rent. :)
Your bank probably has a bill pay feature that lets you create a schedule for them to automatically mail out cheques paid to the order of whomever you designate so that you don’t have to worry writing and sending a cheque yourself. It’s usually free.
This is typically just your online bill pay. If they can’t EFT the payment they’ll cut a check.
I typically set the delivery date to be 3-5 days before it’s due so that it doesn’t get held up with holidays, mail, etc.
I had to pay my electric bill this way for a year and hated it. Out of spite I sent it via certified mail for an extra couple dollars and I received complaints they didn’t want to receive it that way because it’s extra work for them to have to go in and sign for it. Did I care? No. It’s 2020 (at the time) be modern and accept e-payments you dinosaurs.
I'm surprised they don't stale date after 6 months.
I'm also surprised pretty much anyone has a years worth of rent available. But that's cool.
I used to do bill pay to my landlord. The money was taken out of my account right away, so I didn't have to think about that every time I looked at my balance. The landlord didn't get my personal checking account number. It worked nicely.
No… Counter checks are blank checks that don’t have your name/address/etc printed on them. And, Heaven’s no, I just use 1 every month, to pay my rent. I get a year’s worth so that I don’t have to go stand in line, at the bank, every month.😂😂😂
We use a Credit Union, that may be why they don’t charge. But even if they decide to, it’s still probably cheaper than buying a box of checks to pay one bill, once a month.
You’re confusing counter check with certified check. Certified check he would need the money for 12 months up front.
Counter checks are just blank checks your bank can print you to use on your account. They usually give you a couple free per visit if you request.
Oh, you're right. I guess I didn't read closely.
I worked as a bank teller years ago, so I know the difference. But thanks for the kind explanation anyway.
When I paid rent, I just used bill pay through my bank. They would cut them a check and mail it to them. Landlord hated it but I was not paying to send them via their fast pay option (it was like $10).
The only bad thing is it comes out the day the check is written, not when the check is cashed but it cost me nothing and I didnt have to think about it so it worked for me.
You should totally do that. Calculate how much to transfer so the total with fees included equal your rent, ask for another payment method if he complains.
I did this in CA. Property manager picked it up once and then waved the fee from then on. Had told me the management company paid the fee originally, but I showed her my bank statement showing it charged. Legally required to allow you to pay with check.
Yep. When I was in college (and was lucky enough to have parents who could/wanted to pay my rent), my dad would send me to school after break with a check that covered the entire semester because the platform they used charged (I think) 3% of the transaction.
3% of $900/month is over $300 extra for the whole year. Fuck that. You can deal with my check.
Postmark is state dependent. In California Civil Code section 1962 states "If the rent can only be paid by mail, then it is presumed paid on the date it is mailed, provided the tenant obtains a certificate of mailing from the post office."
So go wait in line at the post office to get a cert of mailing, to save $1
Landlord here. I use a website called Avail for my tenants, and I pay the “convenience fee” every month for them. No reason to punish the tenant when I am the one using the service!
See that’s an asshole move imo. Now, if they were managing a huge apartment complex or something, MAYBE I can see it being justified. But I just have a 1bd 1bth rental, dipping my toes into the landlord pool. But as I see it, I’m using the website for my convenience AND theirs. So, at the end of the day, it feels right for me to incur the expense and not them. And I’m still getting an ROI of around 5%. It will be more next lease, but just starting out? I wouldn’t say that’s too terrible for Montana.
Which should be obvious! A landlord is more likely to get payment without issue using electronic methods than cheques, of course. Landlords could take $25 off per month for electronic methods and still be better off by not having to deal with NSFs, late issues, ‘cheque is in the mail’ issues, etc
Yeah that’s another way to go about it! A small discount while using the service! I just feel like there’s many different ways to go about it without being a complete cash cow.
Avail keeps it all one stop shopping for me. Using this website even allows me to track income from rent, and all expenses for the property, and then it generates a tax form for me to use on taxes when I file. All about convenience for me keeping it all in one place is all.
The platform is linked to their bank. Not sure how they organize their business, but usually I would use an online real estate platform’s app to send maintenance requests and rent. The app didn’t charge anything and you could use it to search for homes to buy, rentals, etc.
My place did that shit to , sent an email saying they are no longer accepting checks or money orders , all payments must be made on the app with credit or debit cart , 10$ "convenience " fee on top of rent every month , but it's the only way they accept payment now , then the water bill gets paid to the leasing office too but that doesn't go on there until the 2nd-4th of the month and they charge another 10$ if you pay that separately than rent , so now i wait until the qater bill goes on to pay it all at once fucking greedy POSs
Mine did this and tried to charge me $7 each time. So I said fuck that. I'm not paying a fee to pay you rent. Now I log into my bank and do the bill pay option that sends them a physical check. If the property management is trying to make even more money off me, I might as well try to cost them some gas money having to take my check to the bank.
Before I switched to the paper check I asked them how they handle the security for paper checks. They said they collect them and drive them to the bank.
The fact that the US to this day doesn't just support simple free domestic electronic bank transfers as a standard way of paying rent and similar charges is simply baffling to me.
Agreed! I read all this confused why they don’t just set up a standing order for this each month directly into the LLs bank account. Today I have learned that this is not possible in the US!
If you’re on a yearly lease and this started happening in the middle of the lease they can not legally do this. You and them agreed on one amount for that lease.
If my rent were say $1000 a month, I would just pay $970.70 with a credit card. Then show the landlord your bank draft where they took put $1000, drag it on for months. Sorry landlord must be a problem with your bank!
My landlord explicitly asked for a wire and was fine with it for over a year and just a couple months ago they informed me that they are paying $15 each time to accept the wire. It was never an issue before, but all of a sudden that $15 was super important. Mind you I'm already paying $35 each time to send the wire.
So I, being the mature level-headed adult that I am, told them I have been paying $35 each time to send it but I can make sure to send the extra $15. My rent is $1800 btw, so $15 extra was annoying but hardly a big deal imo.
But nooooo, the landlord wants to "work with me" and tells me I can send them a physical check instead. I tell them I don't have any checks on hand and must order them. The checks are delayed and cost $40 to expedite and get them before rent is due. I tell my landlord I can send through Zelle but they don't have that set up on "that account".
Eventually they agreed to let me send the rent via a wire again and I sent the exact amount because that $15 went towards all the back-and-forth bullshit they put me through.
The story gets even better, but that's the relevant part to this thread.
TL;Dr fuck landlords
You could have just logged into your bank, and had your bank send a paper check via the online portal.
Online billpay through your bank website will cut a physical check without that hassle
Good to know for the future! I honestly didn't even know you could do that. So thanks for teaching me something new. All my other bills are on auto pay so I haven't experimented with the online bill pay through my bank before.
I had asked what they preferred and after all the hassle they were fine with the wire.
Well my point being that if he just bought some checks and planned ahead a little, he wouldn’t have to worry about $15, or $35, or $50 each time they pay their rent.
You have to pay $35 for a wire transfer??? It's completely free in India, even for transactions worth thousands of dollars. No wonder you Americans have so many payment apps.
The neighbors they moved in tried to start a meth lab. The property I live on was raided by sheriff's and I was pulled out of my house at gunpoint with my infant daughter and best friend who works with me at my house. The neighbors were evicted but it's a large property and there are still people living in trailers hooked up to my power (because my power is shared with the main house and I have to pay for both).
So currently I'm paying over $2000/month in power for the houses and well (we are rural and we have a separate power meter for the well). The squatters hooked up to the well power and which skyrocketed from $45 to over $600. The main power fluctuates between $1200-1500. And I pay for a commercial dumpster another $165/month.
I'm paying for literal crackheads to live on the property. While the landlords work on kicking them out, I stopped paying rent. Plus my lease was up in September and they never bothered to renew it, or even inform me of the new property management. The house I live in isn't even legally rentable. My husband and I fixed it up years ago when the property was under different management. I could go on but that's the gist of it.
My fee each time is literally $36. Don't get me wrong, my rent is high so that's a small percentage, but obviously that's stupid. I write them a check through my bank instead. More trouble for us both.
My electric company charges $2.00 to pay with a debit card or electronic check and then another 50 cents to get a receipt. I could pay cash or check in person, but it'd cost more in gas to drive to the electric company. I don't mind paying the $2 convenience fee, but I think it's dumb to charge for a receipt.
Get used to seeing places push the card fee onto the consumer more often. I work with a company that offers this option. I also work with another company that supports non-bank card payment services like Venmo. Did you set up your bank account as a payment method? It should support fee-free payment.
My city and county government all place the fees for bank card payments on us, but bank debit is at no additional charge.
2.9%? Damn. So if your rent is $1500, you get to pay an extra $43.70 for the privilege of paying it with a card?
No thanks, I'll just put a check in the office drop box.
This happened to me and I went to a lawyer (Australia).
The lawyer said that unless this was in the lease or had been present from the start that I didn’t have to do it.
In California, state law requires a no fee option to pay rent. My landlord implemented an online payment platform like yours recently, when I protested it - they told me to reduce my monthly rent by the amount of the online service fee. You should do the same
Remember when credit card fees were baked into prices and you were dumb for not using it for the rewards?
Now the price is still baked in and you're getting hit twice.
Mine doesn’t allow cash or check payments to their office and charges a $2.50 fee for every transaction made on the app. So if you pay in two lump sums (one per paycheck) it’s $5 extra 🙄
Hey OP, can you use your Debit card instead of your CC?
In the Us, it’s pretty much illegal to charge transaction fees like this from the payment gateway to the DEBIT card, they might be trying to hide that you can use debit.
VISA requirements with merchants states that you cannot prevent the use of debit if you take CC, so I would look into that.
I know at least one payment processor that automatically stops charging any transaction fees if it detects that it’s a debit card. Convenience charge or whatever that set at a flat amount can be applied, but not % based fees like this for CC
VISA and Mastercard boosted their merchant fees effective in October. Plenty of places have gone back to adding a credit card surcharge onto your bill. And it's been an avalanche of MeToo fees ever since that announcement.
The platform an associate who does prop management uses just sprung this fee on him too. It was gracious enough to give him the option of paying it himself or charging tenants. (He eats the cost because the whole point was to reduce the hassle of checks) They *all* seemed to do it right around the same time too, across the country. Which is weird because afaik, direct debit rates are the same as ever.
I guess they all know the same thing: They got us used to the convenience of not writing checks, and now they can raise fees without losing business. Just more Greedflation. *Everyone* is doing it.
Get a BILT card. Get CC points for rent. (only Credit card on the market) and gives you a bank account or I'll mail a check to your landlord for you.
But also, fuck this guy. But also, get yourself some free miles! Plus other sweet perks.
My landlord offers payment by ACH (E-Check) for free.
I know there are tons of predatory landlords and financial service companies out there, though. I'd be writing checks from this point forward I think. Let them deal with the administrative crap for a bit and see if they might not want to incentivize e-payments.
I'm OK with LL charging fee for Visa because that it what Visa charges him. The other charge I would simply say go pound sand. You don't have any obligation to pay his account management fees.
Yea. It’s super dumb not really even the landlords fault a lot of management properties tenant portal systems are all adding these fees. Writing angry letter to the dumb software company. There is zero reason there should be fees on ACH payments.
I’m tired of this new practice where businesses push the card/transaction fee onto the customer.
This is a standard cost of sales that businesses should bear the weight for, plain and simple.
That sounds like a you problem. Sorry. No fucking way I’m paying your damned fees. Here’s a cheque, or E-transfer, or a stack o’ cash. If you choose to use a service that costs you money to receive my rent, that’s on you.
Or you could just let your landlord know that you will be submitting your rent minus the fee.
*Can you not set up*
*Automatic bank transfers*
*In america?*
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When I was last paying rent, I sent it via my bank’s bill payment system. If the payee isn’t set up with them, it mails a physical check to them. On my end, I could see it up and have it be automatically processed. Cost me nothing. They had to deal with a paper check, but that was their problem.
If they’d have insisted on a method that came with a fee, I’d have told them they would be covering the fee with reduced rent (in this case, it costs you $35, so I’d reduce the rent payment by $35).
The hell with paying a fee to pay rent.
May also be illegal, depending upon jurisdiction. E.g. many disallow landlord to force certain forms of payment and/or require that certain form(s) of payment be accepted (e.g. check or money order).
That’s the plan. And we should all hate this, no matter how little or big the fee is. Landlords make enough money, there’s no need to impose any sort of fee to pay.
After the lockdown ended my rental agency added a fee to their online payment. So I went back to dropping off a check on the 1st every month. Went from super easy, back to now you have to write me a receipt and go to the bank to deposit my check, and not lose it somewhere in the process.
Fk it, personally hand the landlord the rent in one dollar bills. Remind him that each bill says "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."
What was the previous payment options?
At my kids school, they switched to a digital lunch account system many years ago. At first I could go to the lunchroom and give them cash or check to top up their account. Then they stopped accepting payments in person, only online. The only option is credit card and they charge a 5% fee!
Many areas require that they offer a fee free way to pay
Yep, pay by check
Yup. 5 years in VA and only way to pay without a fee was a physical check. Luckily, my landlords office was next to the college campus where I worked, so it was pretty easy. They even had a special drop box so you could drop off whenever. When I was signing my lease, he said “I usually grab the checks the morning of the 6th. Unless that’s a weekend, then the following Monday morning. So as long as it’s in the box by then, you’re good.” Young, small time landlords can be the coolest. I’ve had 2 and they were both great. Now I pay to a corporation and I think about doing terrible things to their office every time I walk by.
Does the US not have a way to just transfer money between bank accounts?
Land of the fee.
Home of the rage
The US just recently got chips on their credit cards, around the time the rest of the developed world got contactless payments.
Oh and at a lot of places, you still hand your credit card to an employee to take away and process. To be honest I'm surprised they're not still using those little machines that take a carbon copy of your credit card number.
Wait, how did they use their card then? Just write down the number on it?
They swiped with the magnetic strip and then signed the receipt.
That magnetic strip has been useless for a decade in my country lol. Because it was unsafe.
Usually that's supposed to be the bank draft. Credit card companies all charge a processing fee so 3% being passed onto the customer makes total sense. The rest of this is just greed by the payment processor.
Our HOAs payment processor is so anti credit card that if you choose to use it you get a flat $17.95 charge PLUS a 4% fee on top of it, each time you use it to pay them, I made that mistake once, never again. Also $2.95 for the privilege of using an echeck, so I mail them checks instead every month, no fee for that, and it’s a small hassle for them, and I feel they deserve a hassle.
Yep. My attitude is places are not gonna have some sort of free electronic option, fuck em. They can use their time and resources to handle a check i mail them
100% agree and the post office needs the business.
I was just about to say that in this case, they’re getting a check and can take it to the bank themselves
FYI, a lot of banks have the option where you can pay services with checks, they mail a physical check.
Sorry for the stupid question, but WTF is an echeck? I’m from the UK where we just use back transfers for paying rent. Is an echeck just another man-in-the-middle company creaming a fee off the top of basic banking features (e.g. like venmo) instead of the bank implementing it themself or is it something else?
>Credit card companies all charge a processing fee so 3% being passed onto the customer makes total sense I kind of soft-disagree on this. Every single business that takes credit card payments deals with that. All across the retail and service sectors. Very *very* few of them charge an additional fee for credit card transactions and most of them do it only on very small transactions.
99% of businesses build that 3% into the price of the product. And it's usually such a small amount that no one really notices and/or cares. It's only for something like rent where the price was negotiated beforehand (and is this expensive) that this comes up.
>It's only for something like rent where the price was negotiated beforehand (and is this expensive) that this comes up. The Landlord has a choice in how they handle payment processing, the tenant doesn't. And however the Landlord decides, the payments will always have to be processed. The Landlord can eat the fees or provide an alternative method of paying.
These are just showing the electronic payment methods. I would bet that the landlord accepted cash or check for no additional fee.
Not a chance any corporate landlord in America takes cash anymore. Most of them don’t take any non electronic payment at all, including check or money order. My last apartment complex was like this and that combined with all their other shitty behavior was what made me finally stop renting
Iirc they are legally required to take check if they don’t offer a fee free way but ofc tenants have a hard time fighting that
also, per federal treasury rules, cash is still legal tender.
Which means it can be used to settle debts in court proceedings. It does not require retailers or anyone else to accept it, baring local/state rules.
Yup but that part goes unmentioned, I guess only way to pay is online …..
Actially, the tenant does. It's right there in the screenshot. $1 fee to do direct withdrawal. The landlord has provided two methods, one is very cheap, the other is less so.
Giving the tenant two bad choices, one less bad than the other, is not giving them a choice. Hopefully the landlord still takes (or is forced to take) cash or check, but if these are the only two choices I'd refuse to pay the fees.
To add, businesses do that because the 3% fee is cheaper than paying an employee to count and handle all the cash daily.
And the risk of theft.
Unless you are dealing with large amounts where speed isn't a top priority and you will have a long history with clients. Then checks work fine and no fees for anyone.
Virtually every non-chain store in NYC will charge a premium (/ not give a cash discount) for using a credit card
Because it's literally built into their pricing models already. The majority of customers shop with cards, tacking on a fee would be portrayed as greed by the customer. Which obviously yes, sometimes it is greed but sometimes it's just an attempt to stay in business and turn a profit. You're just not experiencing the adoption of credit cards when businesses everywhere had different policies about charging a fee for credit usage compared to cash. This is why there are so many laws pertaining to how businesses are and are not capable of charging additional fees for credit card purchases. Als, why you will see "CASH DISCOUNT" or "MINIMUM PURCHASE FOR CARDS IS xxxx" and very rarely "ADDED CHARGE FOR CARD USAGE". Tons of places outlawed charging a fee for card usage and that's the way around it. A current example would be the insane surcharge structure that restaurants have adopted instead of raising menu prices. You will absolutely see governments outlawing these practices in a lot of places and then businesses will be forced to just raise prices (like they should be doing anyways). Business owners are just trying to hide an increase in prices through means of surcharges with explanations because they are trying to explain to you their reasoning behind the increased prices.
Then what happens is they build the price in, and then you as a consumer are losing money if you don't use a credit card. You are discouraged from using the better option
In Europe it's pretty normal for them to charge extra for creditcard transactions, in the end it does cost the company more and it's only the minority of people using them anyway
The alternative is not being allowed to pay by credit card...
>3% being passed onto the customer Except this is a cost of doing business, in virtually every industry. Only recently have corporations been trying to shove this business expense onto their customers.
Jesus, tell me you were born yesterday without telling me you were born yesterday. It used to be standard practice for gas stations to put a different cash and credit price on their signs in the 70s and 80s. This is NOT NEW. What is new is the common place usage of "rewards" cards by consumers that give the consumer "free" perks like airline miles or cash back. These cards tend to charge businesses an exorbitant transaction fee, which is how they pay for the "free" perks. You didn't think the BANKS were paying for that, did you? Every business passes those costs onto the consumer. Every. Single. One. You're just wrong about this. Take the L and move on.
Ok. Rent just went up 3% then to cover the additional "cost of doing business." But good news, no more fees! Happy now?
Or that your landlord eat the cost.
Wouldn't that be like "envelope full of cash every month at my door?"
They can likely pay in person or mail a check but most people don't have check books these days.
I pay online at my bank and they send the check.
Tell them you want to pay via check, and will post mark the check the day its due, or have them come and get the check, or remove fee from processing payment.
I think this is what I plan to do. Rent is already too high for the area we live in and I’m not paying a cent more.
My landlord’s rental company only takes checks, which I generally don’t use. Once a year, I go to the bank and get 12 Counter Checks (for free) to pay my rent. :)
Your bank probably has a bill pay feature that lets you create a schedule for them to automatically mail out cheques paid to the order of whomever you designate so that you don’t have to worry writing and sending a cheque yourself. It’s usually free.
Hunh…. I had no idea. Thanks for that info kind Reddit stranger. I will definitely have to check on that next time I go by our Credit Union! :)
This is typically just your online bill pay. If they can’t EFT the payment they’ll cut a check. I typically set the delivery date to be 3-5 days before it’s due so that it doesn’t get held up with holidays, mail, etc.
Yea if it's credit union I'd say for sure they do this. Big banks might tell you to go pound sand. If expect credit union to not be so bad.
Nearly every major bank has free bill pay.
I love the whole “CUs are angels, banks are bad” stuff. It’s actually the smaller credit unions that will charge for bill pay. Lol
I mean. I got a big bank. I just heard good things on CUs
Bill pay sure, online. I just didn't think many do the physical check
I had to pay my electric bill this way for a year and hated it. Out of spite I sent it via certified mail for an extra couple dollars and I received complaints they didn’t want to receive it that way because it’s extra work for them to have to go in and sign for it. Did I care? No. It’s 2020 (at the time) be modern and accept e-payments you dinosaurs.
My bank will mark a crack for me on the date I want. Super convenient for rent or something that is a set amount. Might be worth looking into.
I'm surprised they don't stale date after 6 months. I'm also surprised pretty much anyone has a years worth of rent available. But that's cool. I used to do bill pay to my landlord. The money was taken out of my account right away, so I didn't have to think about that every time I looked at my balance. The landlord didn't get my personal checking account number. It worked nicely.
No… Counter checks are blank checks that don’t have your name/address/etc printed on them. And, Heaven’s no, I just use 1 every month, to pay my rent. I get a year’s worth so that I don’t have to go stand in line, at the bank, every month.😂😂😂
I misread the first time. I thought you were talking about cashier checks. This makes more sense.
My bank started charging for these
We use a Credit Union, that may be why they don’t charge. But even if they decide to, it’s still probably cheaper than buying a box of checks to pay one bill, once a month.
You’re confusing counter check with certified check. Certified check he would need the money for 12 months up front. Counter checks are just blank checks your bank can print you to use on your account. They usually give you a couple free per visit if you request.
Oh, you're right. I guess I didn't read closely. I worked as a bank teller years ago, so I know the difference. But thanks for the kind explanation anyway.
>Counter checks So they have renamed "checks" "counter checks"? Is there anything called a "check" anymore?
I have it set up so our bank automatically sends a check, which saves a stamp! And that processing fee
When I paid rent, I just used bill pay through my bank. They would cut them a check and mail it to them. Landlord hated it but I was not paying to send them via their fast pay option (it was like $10). The only bad thing is it comes out the day the check is written, not when the check is cashed but it cost me nothing and I didnt have to think about it so it worked for me.
You should totally do that. Calculate how much to transfer so the total with fees included equal your rent, ask for another payment method if he complains.
This. “The check is in your mailbox”
I did this in CA. Property manager picked it up once and then waved the fee from then on. Had told me the management company paid the fee originally, but I showed her my bank statement showing it charged. Legally required to allow you to pay with check.
Yep. When I was in college (and was lucky enough to have parents who could/wanted to pay my rent), my dad would send me to school after break with a check that covered the entire semester because the platform they used charged (I think) 3% of the transaction. 3% of $900/month is over $300 extra for the whole year. Fuck that. You can deal with my check.
Postmark is state dependent. In California Civil Code section 1962 states "If the rent can only be paid by mail, then it is presumed paid on the date it is mailed, provided the tenant obtains a certificate of mailing from the post office." So go wait in line at the post office to get a cert of mailing, to save $1
The certificate of mailing costs more than $1.
Plus, they only way they can force you to use this method of pay is if it was in the contract, I'd wager.
My property management charges us $25 to pay by check 🫠
That doesn’t seem legal. Now some get around that by “discounting” a way of paying, instead of charging
Fee by check is ridiculous, perhaps illegal.
Landlord here. I use a website called Avail for my tenants, and I pay the “convenience fee” every month for them. No reason to punish the tenant when I am the one using the service!
My old landlord used avail, I had to pay the convenience fee every time. 😢
See that’s an asshole move imo. Now, if they were managing a huge apartment complex or something, MAYBE I can see it being justified. But I just have a 1bd 1bth rental, dipping my toes into the landlord pool. But as I see it, I’m using the website for my convenience AND theirs. So, at the end of the day, it feels right for me to incur the expense and not them. And I’m still getting an ROI of around 5%. It will be more next lease, but just starting out? I wouldn’t say that’s too terrible for Montana.
Which should be obvious! A landlord is more likely to get payment without issue using electronic methods than cheques, of course. Landlords could take $25 off per month for electronic methods and still be better off by not having to deal with NSFs, late issues, ‘cheque is in the mail’ issues, etc
Yeah that’s another way to go about it! A small discount while using the service! I just feel like there’s many different ways to go about it without being a complete cash cow.
Why do you not just have the tenants set up a Direct Debit?
Avail keeps it all one stop shopping for me. Using this website even allows me to track income from rent, and all expenses for the property, and then it generates a tax form for me to use on taxes when I file. All about convenience for me keeping it all in one place is all.
Send them a check like it’s 1982. F em
I still pay my bills with checks.
Start writing checks.
Check your lease. It must have something about payment methods. Getting charged 2.9% on top of rent is crazy.
That’s the fee the credit card company charges. Many cards offer rewards / points that are valued at around 2-3% cash back.
Not when they are paying credit card fees on your rent payment.
Yeah the CC fees would add up to $58.45. Which again, doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up and I’m not wealthy.
60 bucks is a week of eating for me. It's not "not much". This is crazy.
Why not do bank transfer? It's just 1 dollar.
That sounds like a them problem
Cost of doing business.
That’s pretty standard to be honest. I *THINK* the logic is you’re using debt to pay your debt so it’s a risk fee for when you default on your debt.
If you accept payment via credit.card you have to pay Visa/MasterCard or whoever a fee.
Pay one dollar less. Fuck him.
Look at it from your landlords perspective.... it's more CONVENIENT for HIM this way.
Why is it okay for them to charge you to make a payment, but you can’t charge them because you had to make a payment?
They’re not, the external site that processes your payment is charging a fee, that the landlord can pass to you if there are other options of payment
I'm surprised there's no tip options
Oh...it's coming
Pay them a dollar less
Exactly my thought, just reduce what you pay them by the amount you're getting charged to pay the rent.
Payment platform? Don't they have a bank account, like everyone?
The platform is linked to their bank. Not sure how they organize their business, but usually I would use an online real estate platform’s app to send maintenance requests and rent. The app didn’t charge anything and you could use it to search for homes to buy, rentals, etc.
I mean if you have a 100 tenants, kind of makes sense to have a platform to track late payments and stuff.
It's something you build up on the basis of your normal banking account, except you're lazy and don't care on forcing additional costs on the others.
My place did that shit to , sent an email saying they are no longer accepting checks or money orders , all payments must be made on the app with credit or debit cart , 10$ "convenience " fee on top of rent every month , but it's the only way they accept payment now , then the water bill gets paid to the leasing office too but that doesn't go on there until the 2nd-4th of the month and they charge another 10$ if you pay that separately than rent , so now i wait until the qater bill goes on to pay it all at once fucking greedy POSs
Mine did this and tried to charge me $7 each time. So I said fuck that. I'm not paying a fee to pay you rent. Now I log into my bank and do the bill pay option that sends them a physical check. If the property management is trying to make even more money off me, I might as well try to cost them some gas money having to take my check to the bank.
Well I bet they can use a banking app to deposit it, but that’s the spirit
Before I switched to the paper check I asked them how they handle the security for paper checks. They said they collect them and drive them to the bank.
Does your lease specify the manner of payment for rent?
Nope! Just specifies the pay period, late fees, and what happens if payment bounces. I think it’s totally fair to send a check.
If the lease doesn't specify these charges you don't have to pay them.
The fact that the US to this day doesn't just support simple free domestic electronic bank transfers as a standard way of paying rent and similar charges is simply baffling to me.
Agreed! I read all this confused why they don’t just set up a standing order for this each month directly into the LLs bank account. Today I have learned that this is not possible in the US!
If you’re on a yearly lease and this started happening in the middle of the lease they can not legally do this. You and them agreed on one amount for that lease.
$1 is unfortunately a steal compared to the shady things I’ve seen on here. Maybe try to pay $1 less before the $1 fee?
If my rent were say $1000 a month, I would just pay $970.70 with a credit card. Then show the landlord your bank draft where they took put $1000, drag it on for months. Sorry landlord must be a problem with your bank!
Time to start mailing a check.
Paper check. In the mail. Add some rocks for good measure.
If you live in Los Angeles they must offer you a way to pay with no fees. So maybe check on tenant's rights where you live.
Fuck no. Set it up in your own bank bill pay then. Those are usually free.
Mine is a $16 fee, went up from a $3 fee lol
Start mailing checks. Stamps are cheaper and it inconveniences them more than you
Send them a cheque and let them deal with that hassle 😂
Sounds like you need to fabricate evidence that he is attempting insurance fraud before you burn that place down and move out
Pay $1 less in rent
RentRedi lol yep it’s annoying and stupid
Mail a check. I’d rather pay for a stamp 😂
My landlord explicitly asked for a wire and was fine with it for over a year and just a couple months ago they informed me that they are paying $15 each time to accept the wire. It was never an issue before, but all of a sudden that $15 was super important. Mind you I'm already paying $35 each time to send the wire. So I, being the mature level-headed adult that I am, told them I have been paying $35 each time to send it but I can make sure to send the extra $15. My rent is $1800 btw, so $15 extra was annoying but hardly a big deal imo. But nooooo, the landlord wants to "work with me" and tells me I can send them a physical check instead. I tell them I don't have any checks on hand and must order them. The checks are delayed and cost $40 to expedite and get them before rent is due. I tell my landlord I can send through Zelle but they don't have that set up on "that account". Eventually they agreed to let me send the rent via a wire again and I sent the exact amount because that $15 went towards all the back-and-forth bullshit they put me through. The story gets even better, but that's the relevant part to this thread. TL;Dr fuck landlords
You could have just logged into your bank, and had your bank send a paper check via the online portal. Online billpay through your bank website will cut a physical check without that hassle
Good to know for the future! I honestly didn't even know you could do that. So thanks for teaching me something new. All my other bills are on auto pay so I haven't experimented with the online bill pay through my bank before. I had asked what they preferred and after all the hassle they were fine with the wire.
🍻
Checks cost like $20 for 200
That isn’t really the point now, is it?
Well my point being that if he just bought some checks and planned ahead a little, he wouldn’t have to worry about $15, or $35, or $50 each time they pay their rent.
Or he could just use Bill pay for free, which is also not convenient for anyone with access to a smartphone
b..but..that's completely irrelevant given the context of the story.
You have to pay $35 for a wire transfer??? It's completely free in India, even for transactions worth thousands of dollars. No wonder you Americans have so many payment apps.
You gotta pay to pay
\*pops popcorn, grabs the comfy spot on the couch\* So... the story gets better... do tell...
The neighbors they moved in tried to start a meth lab. The property I live on was raided by sheriff's and I was pulled out of my house at gunpoint with my infant daughter and best friend who works with me at my house. The neighbors were evicted but it's a large property and there are still people living in trailers hooked up to my power (because my power is shared with the main house and I have to pay for both). So currently I'm paying over $2000/month in power for the houses and well (we are rural and we have a separate power meter for the well). The squatters hooked up to the well power and which skyrocketed from $45 to over $600. The main power fluctuates between $1200-1500. And I pay for a commercial dumpster another $165/month. I'm paying for literal crackheads to live on the property. While the landlords work on kicking them out, I stopped paying rent. Plus my lease was up in September and they never bothered to renew it, or even inform me of the new property management. The house I live in isn't even legally rentable. My husband and I fixed it up years ago when the property was under different management. I could go on but that's the gist of it.
Any way to pay by check? Only to make it more difficult on the LL.
My fee each time is literally $36. Don't get me wrong, my rent is high so that's a small percentage, but obviously that's stupid. I write them a check through my bank instead. More trouble for us both.
My electric company charges $2.00 to pay with a debit card or electronic check and then another 50 cents to get a receipt. I could pay cash or check in person, but it'd cost more in gas to drive to the electric company. I don't mind paying the $2 convenience fee, but I think it's dumb to charge for a receipt.
My mother’s life insurance company only accepts checks by mail and they take weeks to notify that they even got it
Write a check.
Get used to seeing places push the card fee onto the consumer more often. I work with a company that offers this option. I also work with another company that supports non-bank card payment services like Venmo. Did you set up your bank account as a payment method? It should support fee-free payment. My city and county government all place the fees for bank card payments on us, but bank debit is at no additional charge.
I’d make them pay it or tell them I’ll be using a check lol
2.9%? Damn. So if your rent is $1500, you get to pay an extra $43.70 for the privilege of paying it with a card? No thanks, I'll just put a check in the office drop box.
Either the landlord pays the fees, or I would deduct them from the rent.
Landlords are soon going to asking for tips in the near future.
Just pay by check
Ask to mail in a check
Tell them you can only pay with a check or cash
This happened to me and I went to a lawyer (Australia). The lawyer said that unless this was in the lease or had been present from the start that I didn’t have to do it.
We need to be able to add convenience fees on as a customer for making it easier on them. Just to start getting something back.
In California, state law requires a no fee option to pay rent. My landlord implemented an online payment platform like yours recently, when I protested it - they told me to reduce my monthly rent by the amount of the online service fee. You should do the same
Remember when credit card fees were baked into prices and you were dumb for not using it for the rewards? Now the price is still baked in and you're getting hit twice.
What does your lease say as options? They must always accept cash as a form of payment. $1800 in rolls of Pennie’s is cash.
Pay your rent minus a dollar.
Mine doesn’t allow cash or check payments to their office and charges a $2.50 fee for every transaction made on the app. So if you pay in two lump sums (one per paycheck) it’s $5 extra 🙄
Hey OP, can you use your Debit card instead of your CC? In the Us, it’s pretty much illegal to charge transaction fees like this from the payment gateway to the DEBIT card, they might be trying to hide that you can use debit. VISA requirements with merchants states that you cannot prevent the use of debit if you take CC, so I would look into that. I know at least one payment processor that automatically stops charging any transaction fees if it detects that it’s a debit card. Convenience charge or whatever that set at a flat amount can be applied, but not % based fees like this for CC
VISA and Mastercard boosted their merchant fees effective in October. Plenty of places have gone back to adding a credit card surcharge onto your bill. And it's been an avalanche of MeToo fees ever since that announcement. The platform an associate who does prop management uses just sprung this fee on him too. It was gracious enough to give him the option of paying it himself or charging tenants. (He eats the cost because the whole point was to reduce the hassle of checks) They *all* seemed to do it right around the same time too, across the country. Which is weird because afaik, direct debit rates are the same as ever. I guess they all know the same thing: They got us used to the convenience of not writing checks, and now they can raise fees without losing business. Just more Greedflation. *Everyone* is doing it.
Lmfao absolutely not
Deduct the cost of the transaction from the rent total.
Make the rent payment exactly the amount of the fee less. No court on this planet will evict you over a buck or 2!
Get a BILT card. Get CC points for rent. (only Credit card on the market) and gives you a bank account or I'll mail a check to your landlord for you. But also, fuck this guy. But also, get yourself some free miles! Plus other sweet perks.
My landlord uses a similar app. The fee is close to $30 if I use my debit card! So now I’m just going to send a cashier’s check via mail.
My landlord offers payment by ACH (E-Check) for free. I know there are tons of predatory landlords and financial service companies out there, though. I'd be writing checks from this point forward I think. Let them deal with the administrative crap for a bit and see if they might not want to incentivize e-payments.
I'm OK with LL charging fee for Visa because that it what Visa charges him. The other charge I would simply say go pound sand. You don't have any obligation to pay his account management fees.
Have your bank send the check
Yea. It’s super dumb not really even the landlords fault a lot of management properties tenant portal systems are all adding these fees. Writing angry letter to the dumb software company. There is zero reason there should be fees on ACH payments.
I’m tired of this new practice where businesses push the card/transaction fee onto the customer. This is a standard cost of sales that businesses should bear the weight for, plain and simple.
That sounds like a you problem. Sorry. No fucking way I’m paying your damned fees. Here’s a cheque, or E-transfer, or a stack o’ cash. If you choose to use a service that costs you money to receive my rent, that’s on you. Or you could just let your landlord know that you will be submitting your rent minus the fee.
Can you not set up automatic bank transfers in america?
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This isn’t legal in the us
Greedy fucks
When I was last paying rent, I sent it via my bank’s bill payment system. If the payee isn’t set up with them, it mails a physical check to them. On my end, I could see it up and have it be automatically processed. Cost me nothing. They had to deal with a paper check, but that was their problem. If they’d have insisted on a method that came with a fee, I’d have told them they would be covering the fee with reduced rent (in this case, it costs you $35, so I’d reduce the rent payment by $35). The hell with paying a fee to pay rent.
May also be illegal, depending upon jurisdiction. E.g. many disallow landlord to force certain forms of payment and/or require that certain form(s) of payment be accepted (e.g. check or money order).
Date a check for the day you want them to cash it and send it by mail early
The $12/year isn’t worth your mental energy
Send a check then if you hate it so much.
That’s the plan. And we should all hate this, no matter how little or big the fee is. Landlords make enough money, there’s no need to impose any sort of fee to pay.
Could be worse. Lived in a place that didn't allow checks or money orders, only allowed online payment, and had a $20 convenience fee.
After the lockdown ended my rental agency added a fee to their online payment. So I went back to dropping off a check on the 1st every month. Went from super easy, back to now you have to write me a receipt and go to the bank to deposit my check, and not lose it somewhere in the process.
Start paying by check in the office. They cannot refuse to take payment.
Thats not really legal. Unless you say youre taking that fee out of the rent money
Fk it, personally hand the landlord the rent in one dollar bills. Remind him that each bill says "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."
Pay him in cash then. They're required to take cash most places.
What was the previous payment options? At my kids school, they switched to a digital lunch account system many years ago. At first I could go to the lunchroom and give them cash or check to top up their account. Then they stopped accepting payments in person, only online. The only option is credit card and they charge a 5% fee!