Personal property taxes are due Wednesday. I remembered for once and decided that rather than find all the bills, I would just pay online. In the first place, if you pay by credit card or debit card, you are going to get assessed a fee of 2.5% which I highly resent. There’s just something about getting charged $5-20 bucks (my cars are old) that irriates the living hell out of me in the age of electronics. If you pay by echeck, there is no charge. I chose to pay by echeck.
Secondly, has anyone ever tried to navigate the county website? Other than Park Authority, I don’t think there is a more poorly designed website. Just finding the right place to go to is no easy feat. I have to enlarge my page to 200% just to be able to see it. There is more junk on that thing. Major topics with sub topics would be great. Just floating through all the options is daunting.
Thirdly, I noticed that I was not assessed a county tag on my second vehicle. I could not just voluntarily pay the extra $24 bucks either. Now what happens if I get stopped? Will I be fined, hung out in the public square of humiliation? Where should I go confess?
Fourthly, my email address was wrong. I attempted to correct it. The freaking website would not accept the submission of change. I gave up. It is far easier to bitch about the lousy website than it is to do anything about it.
Don’t we have an IT office? Wasn’t that the office that embezzled millions of dollars from the taxpayers? Didn’t that money go out of country, to India or something, never to be returned? Is that what they were doing when this website got designed? I expect better. I expect not to have thieves in the office and I expect a website that is somewhat easy to navigate. Paying a bill shouldn’t take a half hour. Yes, I could go up to Sudley North, but I shouldn’t have to.
If I were running for supervisor, I would prioritize getting the website in order. That is the most contact most of us have with county government. May I rank my customer satisfaction? F
What we have no is close to being a disgrace. The Park Authority website IS a disgrace.
Hmmm…..The Moonhowler in the stocks in the public square for not having a tax sticker on the windshield?
BTW, thanks for reminding me. Got two tax bills for cars in my “to-do stack” that I clean forgot.
The best and brightest go into government IT..
They probably were the best and brightest. They managed to embezzle several million bucks undetected over a number of years. I am going to take that as a positive comment.
Please tell me that is what you meant.
And you want government to control your healthcare?
I have never said one way or the other how I feel about health care. @kelly
I thought we don’t do stickers anymore?
We don’t but if you get stopped, the cops can access the system to see if you have paid or not.
Hrm. Interesting theory.
The best and brightest go into government service and then learn to become thieving criminals.
I think I agree with you, MH. 😉
@marin
I don’t agree with you at all about the mediocre going in to govt.
I expect our IT thieves probably learned elsewhere.
Moon, that 2.5% being passed on to the payer when on the website does not suprise me – County just passing on what the Card Companies are hitting them with for processing fee. Normal business operation occuring now in a lot of places…..but watch for it to get excessive like Bank of America starting to charge $5 when someone uses their debit card.
So much for “E-Commerce” in the 21st Century. I have yet to figure out where it cost $5 to run a debit card except just a way to add to greed.
And if you think PWC website is a pain in the tush, I was up on Alexandria City website looking for a document. Talk about a website that is not even intuitive in moving around…had to sit and come up with a totally bureaucratic approach in my thinking to figure out how that website was laid out. Once I did that, found what I was looking for.
@Raymond, would Paypal charge them as much? 2.5% seems very excessive. I don’t mind covering the credit card fees. If that is what they are being charged, no problem but they need to say so.
Question,, if I went in to the county offices to pay, would I be assessed that much paying with a credit card? I believe they charge that much on the phone also.
@Moon-howler
Yes, you would indeed be assessed the 2.5% fee at the counter at Sudley North.
Raymond,
City of Alex’s website is almost useless. They were the LAST jurisdiction in the Commonwealth to make their land records available online for a user fee. They waited until almost the day of the mandate. Geesh.
I don’t think anything in my office has produced more curse words than the stupid county website. I call it user-unfriendly. It takes 4 clicks to get somewhere that should take two clicks. It has those long paragraphs of questions and answers to find what should be a tab. ARRRGH! And then there is the information that they hide. Why 4-5 clicks to get to real estate assessments? Why is the address to send in receipts for a high mileage vehicle found NOWHERE that is easy to access? Maybe they don’t want us to access those things. I don’t think I have ever used another search feature that manages to pull up more unrelated items as the top choices. How can they obscure the simplest of things.
When I complained about it before I was told that each department administrative person does their own section. The IT department just helps them if they have trouble getting their information in a format that fits. I guess that explains the mess because no one with any web experience is doing the formatting.
Okay I will now step off the soapbox that I bounded onto once I read moonhowlers post and I can go back to cursing the county website as I look for tax information.
WSC, I certainly cannot disagree with you. I only have one retraction. We have a car that doesn’t get a county sticker. I did not realize that.
Well Kudos for PWC today! I went to pay the taxes on car five since cars 1-4 were already paid. Don’t ask me why we have five cars, but we do. I went to the gov’t building this afternoon at 4:04 and there was a line into the parking lot. There was also a person standing on the sidewalk with drop off envelopes for those paying with checks, who also had their tax payment stubs with them. I was able to drop check and payment stub off in less than a minute and avoided the line completely. YAY!
Good for them!! Cheer. And let me say again that there was a reason why one car didn’t get assessed a county fee.
@Moon-howler
Moon, 2.5% is pretty standard across most businesses accepting card payments. As for Paypal, they assess based on a scale. If you do under $3,000 in transactions, the fee is 2.9% plus 30cents….and to get the lower fee of 2.2% plus 30 cents, you have to do over $10,000 in transactions. I skipped the middle rates, but think you get the picture.
PayPal does give nonprofits a discounted rate: if under $3,000 the fee is 2.2% plus 30 cents and if $10,000 or over, then 1.9% plus 30 cents.
Every transaction has that added “plus 30 cents” on top of the percentage they take. Overhead cost I suppose. Oh, and if you do less than $10 in transactions, that is their “5% plus 5cents” rate. PayPal also has a currency converstion rate on top of the transaction percentage and fee of an additional 2.5%
Ah, Business! and remember, Business is just business…nothing personal.
as for the City of Manassas, you can also make certain payments online. The City uses a website called “Official Payments” as do a lot of other local/state/federal outfits. Official Payments is owned by Tier Technologies of Reston VA. Depending on what your paying, the “convenience fee” is based on the amount and covers the cost of the transaction. So even in the City, if you pay online, you pay a fee. If you go into Treasurer’s Office to pay with a card, you get hit with a fee. Do an e-check or telephone also gets you a fee.
Nice they call it a “convenience fee” making it sound like they are doing you a favor.
Raymond, thank for the info. I wasn’t sure about paypal. So, are debit cards treated the same? I suppose charities would prefer we use checks?
Echeck does not have a fee in the county. Score one for the county.
@Moon-howler
Debits are treated the same way, just a lower processing fee. Merchants pay the banks something like 50 to 75 cents per $100…another sliding scale. PayPal does not recognize it a debit any different than a charge card for its fees. As for the consumer, as in the news lately a lot of the big banks are slapping a user fee, which is kinda funny since both VISA and Mastercard are paying the banks money to encourage adopting their cards.
Debits were the grand idea once to be the answer to no checks and a cash-less society. The banks slapping a user fee on the debits ticks me off since when it comes to checks, they must store them which costs more than a line item record in a database.
A lot of charities using PayPal now and accept the fee as just part of doing business. Even if you did a direct deposit out of your check to a charity through the United Way, all of what you donate does not hit the charity of choice – United Way takes off about 10% for their processing and overhead. So yes, direct check to charity or cash is a good way to go.
Not suprised the County does not have a fee for e-check….dollar volume is higher in PWC than the City, so the fee is probably waived by the entity PWC uses.
Funny–I followed the directions and it was pretty easy. I guess it helps to not be computer savvy because you have to read the directions.