Automatic payments are supposed to make life easier, but sometimes, they do the opposite.

What would you do if your landlord charged you an extra $10 every month just for paying rent online? Would you accept the fee as part of the process? Or would you look for a way around it?

In the following story, one renter finds themselves facing this exact dilemma and avoids paying the fee. Here’s what happened.

Paying rent without a fee

When we first moved to our apartment, a question came up about how we wanted to pay rent.

They had a website with two choices: Pay by card or pay by bank withdrawal.

I picked “pay by card,” and after I filled out all my information online, on the last page, it said they’d be charging me a convenience fee of about $10 for doing this automatically. I then tried again for “pay by bank withdraw,” filled out all the information.. and once again, I got hit with that $10 convenience fee.

I thought that was annoying, as I didn’t want to keep paying an extra $10 every month for rent.

After a little research, they found a free workaround.

The “convenience” is of them automatically taking the money instead of me manually writing up a check and giving it to them.

So, I looked up their address, went to my bank’s “bill pay” page, and scheduled a recurring payment to that address every month.

I ended up saving $10 every month for free. The inconvenience was passed to the apartment managers, who now have to open the mail and get my check every month.

After a while of living there, I talked with a few neighbors who complained about having to pay this extra $10 all the time. I told them about this trick of paying automatically through the bank. Made them happy.

Wow! That was a lucky find.

Let’s check out what the folks over at Reddit have to say about this situation.

Here’s a similar experience.

This person was forced to pay an expensive fee.

Another similar story.

This is the reason for the fee.

That’s the best way to avoid the fee.

It’s crazy how many people don’t know that they can schedule payments through their bank.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.