(In)Convenience Fees

Many of the services available on the Internet have started charging "convenience fees". The DMV, Ticketmaster, theme parks, theaters and other such venues are all charging convenience fees.

Why?

Why do we, the consumer have to pay a "convenience fee" for using their web-based service? The whole point of putting a service on the web is so that the business can reduce their overhead and cut staffing. If they don't have to pay someone to stand at the counter then they are saving money. If they don't even need a counter then they are saving a lot more money.

It seems to me that conducting these transactions online is more convenient for them then for the consumer. So why do we have to pay for a convenience fee?

Are we paying for their convenience? I recently bought tickets online for a show, while it was cool for me to be able to buy the tickets at half-past one in the morning the real convenience was realized by Ticketmaster who did not have to pay someone to talk to me at half-past one in the morning.

The beauty of being an online vendor is that it opens up the business to a 24/7 model that was not financially practical before the Internet. Clothing stores used to have set hours. Bookstores were only open until 8 o'clock. You had to wait in a hideously long line to get tickets to the Duran Duran concert. Don't even ask me how much time I wasted in line to buy a ticket to Star Wars!

Now we have Fandango and Ticketmaster, Amazon and Gap - all online. Their web-presence has enabled them to sell more, to a broader range of people (like vampires, agoraphobics and night owls like me) during every part of the day from any part of the world.

That seems bloody convenient to me. So why is that convenience being charged for?

For me, this all started with the DMV. I had to pay a $4 convenience fee to renew my registration online. Granted, in the case of the DMV it is considerably more convenient to do my transaction online. But I know that those sloths down at my local DMV office aren't working for free. The sheer volume of bad karma created by unhappy people waiting in outrageously long lines to be told by bored ignorant assholes to fill out this form then start another line all over again would be enough to make it worthwhile to FORCE people to transact online.

Yet, the DMV's "convenience fee" feels more like a punishment. If they didn't charge the convenience fee maybe more people would do their transactions online. They could reduce the number of unhappy employees they hire each year. They could cut back on the training that the unhappy employees seem to ignore. Think of the savings in wasted forms that were filled out at the insistence of unhappy, under trained employees! My God, we could probably feed the homeless from the savings.

But instead, we have to pay convenience fees. The whole thing is damned inconvenient. Perhaps we, as consumers, could charge a convenience fee to retailers when we actually walk into their brick and mortar buildings. After all, we just saved them the cost of paying some web developer thousands of dollars to build a website.

I'll try this next trip to the DMV. I'll wait in line for three hours, and when I'm leaving I'll collect my four dollar convenience fee from the Information Desk. After all, I saved them the convenience of running a website just for me. I'll let you know how that works out.