Wednesday, June 27, 2012

California & The Internet

San Diego County allows you to pay your property taxes online, but charges you 6% for doing so. They claim that credit card companies charge them that percentage for processing the payment, which is absurd. I have a merchant account which charges me less than that, and I am a flyspeck compared to San Diego County.

The renewal notice for your auto license says that you can renew online and provides the URL for doing so. That turns out to be not wholly mythical, but it is not entirely factual, either. I went to the DMV website, which says there is no extra charge for renewing online. Excellent, let's give it a shot.

I clicked on the "renew tag" link and got "page not found" error. Tried again and got the "Step One" page where I filled in the tag number and last five digits of the VIN. Clicked on the "go to step two" button and got another "page not found" error. There are, it said earlier, eight steps.

I believe it is time to get out the checkbook and some stamps.

1 comment:

  1. bruce8:59 AM

    There was an FTC (or something) ruling a while back that reduced CC and debit fees. I suppose this doesn't apply here because this is a "convenience fee" similiar to buying tickets online... This is probably actually saving them money and they are marking it up to make money.

    Of course, we never trust the DMV.

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