Extortion!!!

Extortion is what it is! Poor decent people who strive to pay their utility bills are now being asked to pay...no, sorry, forced to pay fee to pay their bills! What kind a &#^#%ry is that? Let me set the plot for you.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, honest hardworking, bill paying, customers of the utility companies would queue up is almost never ending lines to pay their exorbitantly high bills at the utility company's branch offices. Some time ago the idea of a bill paying agency was born. It was like a blessing, the best thing since slice bread! Now you could go to one central place to pay all their utilities!

Seeing the success of the bill payment agencies like, Paymaster and Bills Express, the utility companies, like JPS, The National Water Commission and Cable and Wireless, decided it would save them a whole bunch of money if they shut down their branch offices and allow the bill payment agencies to do the job of collecting.

Now these bill payment agencies were basking in success, now they are collecting for all the utility companies. Now instead of getting a fee from the utility company to collect the payment of a few who found it convenient, they were now being payed by the utility companies to collect from everybody on a full time basis! Oh, Paymaster and Bills Express were now reaping their rewards! Or so you would think! Just a couple of months ago, Paymaster, seeing how they could plunder hard working underpaid Jamaicans and get fat off the spoils got greedy! Paymaster decided that the money the utility companies were paying them was too little, they wanted more! So what did they decided to do? Ask the companies to pay more? No! They decided to target they poor consumer by charging a fee to pay a bill! Yes, consumers were told that they would have to pay a fee for every bill they pay!

OK, paying a small fee for the convenience of paying all your bills at one location isn't that bad, right? It wouldn't be bad if it was a small fee, instead Paymaster has imposed a $30 fee per transaction! Paymaster's main competitor Bills Express, could not let all this loot pass them by and decided to jump in on the action and slapped it's customers with a $35 service charge per transaction! There is no escape now! So if you have to pay your cable bill, light bill, telephone bill and water bill you will now have to pay as much as 4x35=$140 extra on your ever increasing utility bills! What the %#$#, this is ^#%@^@ robbery! It would be somewhat OK for them to charge a fee if consumers still had the option of the utility companies' branch offices. At least their would be a choice.

Who will save the defenceless consumer? The OUR (Office of Utilities Regulation)? Please, they can't do shit! the OUR is like a dog without teeth. When the consumer turned to them for help they outright declared that they can do nothing to protect consumers from this form of extortion.

Although this doesn't affect me as I pay my bills online through the bank, it stills upsets me to see this level of exploitation. And who knows, the banks may be the next ones to jump on the band wagon!

PS: New photo posted on Exotic Fotos.