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Telephone bills can no longer be paid in Sylva
By Emily Elders
Local Verizon telephone customers who don’t have checking accounts may be searching for a new way to pay their bills after the only payment center in the county stopped accepting payments March 1.
Radio Shack/Total Data Systems owner Lynda Sossamon said Wednesday that her store began notifying customers Jan. 1 that the payments for Verizon land-line telephone bills would no longer be taken at their location. The store, located at 90 E. Main St., will still accept payments for Verizon Wireless and Duke Power bills.
The third-party company that processes the payments, Fidelity Express, told Sossamon late last year that they would begin charging customers $1 to pay their bills at a payment center.
“It was just going to be too much extra processing,” she said. “Even if you paid your bill by check, you’d have to bring a dollar in cash with you. We told them we didn’t agree with that.”
Fidelity was notified of Radio Shack’s decision in December, and told Sossamon they would find another store to contract with in the county. Sossamon said that though they had not notified her store of any new payment center as of Wednesday, the third-party agent was still responsible to Verizon for providing a payment center.
“We’re sorry for the inconvenience this may cause people, and we’ve tried to let everyone know,” she said.
This leaves no other payment centers for land-line customers within the county. Franklin’s Books Unlimited and Clampitt Hardware in Bryson City are the closest listed payment centers, although Fidelity’s new $1 charge will apply to both existing and new payment centers.
Verizon representatives were unavailable for comment via phone messages Tuesday and Wednesday. However, according to Verizon’s Web site, payments may be made via telephone with a credit or debit card with a charge of $3 per transaction, or may be made through the mail with an allowance of 10 days for processing in order to avoid late payment charges.
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