I received a check in the mail from Beneficial Finance for $5000.28. It said if I cashed it I would be opening a loan for that amount. Fine, I did that. Then my first statment arrives and on the envelope it states "Make Your Payment Online" and it gives the url beneficial.com And it also says "A nominal fee may apply". I like to make all of my payments online so I logged on to their site and made a payment from my checking account online.
Nowhere on their website is there any mention of a fee for making an online payment, much less how much that fee will be. For me it was $7! This is only disclosed AFTER you make the payment. If you enter a payment amount of say $100 when they confirm the payment it says that your bank account will be chaged $107. They just sneak it in like that, not even mentioning that they are charging a fee. I believe that this practice is probably illegal. Consumers must be told the amount of the charge that they are authorizing before they authorize it. And they must have an opportunity to cancel the charge if it is anything other than what they authorized.
Anyway the moral of the story is DO NOT pay online if you have a loan from Beneficial. You could mail in your payment by Certified Priority Mail and it would cost only $6.15. Better yet just set up an online payment from your checking account through your own bank. Most banks will do this for free.
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