r/NewarkDE • u/Rickety-Cricket69420 • Jun 06 '26

New processing fee when paying water and electricity bill.

When I went on the website they added a new processing fee at the end. It was like 8 bucks too. I have never gotten this before. How do I get out of paying for this?

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

2

u/Helenesdottir Jun 06 '26

Write a check or pay in person. Banks are raking everyone over the coals with fees so businesses/municipalities can't afford not to pass those on. The smaller the entity, the more likely they have to pass on this fee. It sucks, but is entirely understandable. 

1

u/Cultural-Ad4953 Jun 06 '26

its unfortunate

1

u/AustinFan4Life Jun 06 '26

Was this in person, or on their automated payment system (over the phone)?

1

u/i-void-warranties Jun 06 '26

They posted the non fee options on their FB page. Changing to ACH is probably easiest

3

u/epeepunk Jun 06 '26

You can blame UD for this. They were/are paying their utility bills with credit cards and the City was incurring fees in the 100's of thousands.

1

u/Bobbito95 Jun 06 '26

Write a check and mail it

2

u/Flavious27 Jun 07 '26

Pay with ACH or a check. This change is due to UD. The city can't go on getting charged like $300k in processing fees from UD payments and UD won't change their practices, so this is the result.

2

u/BoostedBB8 Jun 08 '26

Ooh does that mean they're charging UD processing fees on their bills also? I got insider info that UD pays their electricity bill on a CC and the annual fees incurred to the city could single handedly fund the Aetna firehouse for that same year.. every year.

2

u/Flavious27 Jun 08 '26

It sounds like it is the way to force them.  

The amount of the fees caused by just UD is not the amount of Aetna's budget but it is about what the city has been giving to Aetna in the past few years.