Since we can effectively pay anyone's cell bill if we know their carrier and phone number, we should put in $1 payments to our friends this holiday. haha
That would be a great way to spread good cheer but some of the carriers require a passcode.
Which carriers require a passcode? I would hesitate to give CN my account PIN...
Interesting you guys bring up this, as I am going to gift someone $100 by paying their bill.
When inquiring about that, I was told by CN that when paying an AT&T bill, a fee is added to that account's bill (by AT&T) if the account passcode / pin is not provided to CN.
Note I have no clue what the fee is, as I don't have AT&T and could not find anything online about the actual amount (using their website).
@PEW and @tech-stitch,
I know from personal experience that Boost charges an extra $3 for Support-assisted payments, whether over the phone or in-store; looks like Cricket has the same fee according to their website. So I would expect roughly the same charge for any other option via CN (except for Red Pocket per @mmfacemm's post above), if you don't want to provide your PIN information.
When I asked CN Support about NOT giving them the PIN for our Boost account, they said that they could still process the payment but it might add a few days to get it completed (and cost you the extra $3), so you might want to submit your payment request a little earlier if you skip the PIN.
One last thing to consider -- yes, it's a bit risky to share your account PIN with CN Support, but we have never had any problems in that regard. I sort of consider it the same as having credit card info stored on various websites for auto-payments, etc. You just need to keep an eye on the accounts every once in a while to make sure everything is A-OK and nobody has used your info to jet off to the Alps (although in our case, if they tried using our credit card they'd be mighty disappointed to run out of $$$ before they even got on the plane :)).
Whatever you decide, good luck and keep on swiping!
Hm... that's upsetting. I pay on Sprint Post Paid and there is no fee. Thanks for the education.
I was told the AT&T fee was $5. I just change pin after transaction goes thru.