Ramone Castro, 31, has had a rough day ? the Owings Mills computer programmer was towed from a downtown parking space.
Unhappy about the $240 fee for the tow and parking ticket, Castro said he was outraged to discover an extra fee just for using plastic to get his car back.
“It?s $15 dollars just to pay with a credit card,” he said. “I?ve paid $27 today to use my credit card to pay bills in the city,” he said.
“It?s ridiculous.”
Castro is a victim of “convenience fees” ? the extra charges levied on citizens trying to pay everything from parkingtickets to water bills with credit cards. Residents accustomed to using their cards free of charge find themselves paying fairly substantial fees ? $6.95 to use a credit card to pay an average parking ticket or $5 to use a debit card.
For Ramone, the extra charge adds injury to insult.
“Usually the fees for paying by credit card are absorbed; it doesn?t make sense,” he said.
And while Baltimore is not alone in charging to use credit cards, its fees are comparatively high.
San Francisco charges a $6 convenience fee, according to the city?s Web site, while Providence, R.I. charges $3 to pay a ticket with a credit card.
But Washington, Chicago, Miami and Boston allow residents to pay tickets online free of charge.
Darrell West, professor of political science at Brown University, who has studied cities using e-commerce, said the trend nationwide is to eliminate fees.
“User fees are infrequent on American government Web sites. Technology planners worry that fees will discourage usage,” West said.
Getting people to pay online, Brown said, is more efficient. Ergo, most city governments want to encourage people to use credit cards.
“The more people who file online, the cheaper it is for city government. Governments generally want as many people as possible to use these services,” he said.
Tier Technologies, the company that handles online payments for Baltimore through a Web site called “Official Payments,” said the convenience fees are set by the city.
“In the case of Baltimore, it?s a contract where there?s no-fee for the city,” said Klara Reilly spokeswoman for Tier.
A spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon?s office did not return a call for comment by press time.
