So as I continued to gorge on my greasy slice of heaven she brought up how if you choose to pay online, you get charged a fee of ten dollars. This fee is called a "convenience" fee I guess because it allows you to pay what you have to pay from the comforts of your home. I didn't really like having to drive all the way to campus just to pay my tuition off so i didn't really mind the fee itself. I just don't like how the cashiers office when about getting the fee the first year I heard about this online pay method.
You see a couple of semesters back I had tried to pay off my tuition on campus the way I had been doing my entire time in college,but for some reason this year I wasn't allowed to. they said bottom line I had to pay over the internet. Now when you pay online you are charged a convenience fee of Ten dollars. So for who is it convenient??
I do not know if this was just some bad luck or something but i know that if i am forced to pay a convenience fee when it is not convenient for me, its going to piss me off. I already drove all the way to campus so the leg work is done. There is no more convenience. So I thought I thought I should look into a little more so i did some research
I was looking into the topic of words that can be misleading and came across a very good point in an article called "The language problem" by Jesper Hermann. Hermann says:
Every human being brings with her or his engagement with words a lifetime of previous experience, and also applies it to communication with others. The assumption is that words we choose -must in some way- correspond to the notions entertained by others who use them....... each of us understands his own tinged version of the words we all use.... to such an extent that we sometimes wake up and realize that now my colour is too far away from yours, and must be corrected accordingly.
So an important thing to look into cashiers office. When you say that something is convenient it implies that there is something inconvenient. It is important to state in this instance for who the convenience is intended. Is it for you... or is it for me??? Is the online processing annoying so you're charging me ten dollars? or is my not leaving my home worth ten dollars? You see because my lifetime of experience with the word "convenience" when it pertains to me usually means its in my benefit. It just didn't seem this way in this particular occasion.
So in conclusion. If I choose to go pay my bill and I choose to deny the "convenience" option, don't make me have to pay it anyway. If you really want to charge me ten bucks, call it a processing fee or something.
over and out.
Wow, that is absolutely ridiculous. I definitely see what you're saying though I had a similar situation in which I once went to request my transcript at the school instead of online and it was frustrating. I ended up having to do it online anyway. I really hate how they call it a convenience fee it really shows hoe deceptive people can be. I personally think that they get people to so easily buy into that kind of stuff because they play on peoples emotions. People just feel bad if they are burdening someone else as well as it also playing on how lazy Americans especially are.
ReplyDeleteI didn't even think about the convenience fee because I also have scholarships paying my way and i live nearly an hour away but that is the wrong title for that fee. They could call it a miscellaneous fee or an additive fee but not convenient when it's the only way to pay it.
ReplyDeleteIf we all called the sky purple, would it be purple? This is a question I want to pose to my high school students when I start teaching. It makes a point about language. I imagine some students will answer that calling it purple doesn’t change the fact that it is blue. It isn’t, by definition, blue. That’s just the word we use for it. But if you call that color blue and I call it purple we have a problem. We aren’t able to communicate about it. While we are able to break some rules, bend others, and throw others completely out the window, we do have to abide by some of the same rules in order to communicate with each other. I imagine that teenagers won’t want to here that they must follow rules or that they have to do it the same as everyone else. Maybe I can make a point that we already follow the same rules by speaking the English we have learned our entire lives. I wonder what other word I can use besides “rules.”
ReplyDeleteLanguage can be used to clarify, or mislead. Is it really being used on way or the other here? Or is it arbitrary? Fees are usually called convenience, so all of them can be randomly labeled this. This fee was probably intended to be convenient, when it was added as a way to pay from home as an OPTION. Then, when some brilliant person decided that it should be the only method, because collecting net payments is more convenient for the college too..... it simply becomes a mess. Bureaucracy at its finest.
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