If youâve paid an electric bill, a car loan, or a phone bill through a site you found by searching your billerâs name, go look at what you actually paid. There may be a âdelivery feeâ on it that your utility never charged you.
The Federal Trade Commission announced on August 17 that doxo will pay $2.1 million to settle claims it spent years standing between people and bills they were already going to pay.
The mechanics fit in one sentence. You search for how to pay your utility bill, an ad sits at the top of the results, you click it, you see your utilityâs name and logo on the page, you type in your card, and the payment goes through. Except you arenât on your utilityâs site. Youâre on doxo, which the FTC says had no relationship with many of the companies whose logos it was showing.
Then came the fees. The FTC says doxo added âdelivery feesâ without clearly disclosing them up front and hid the fact that the waiver only applied to certain payment methods. It also says doxo signed people up for a recurring subscription without clearly telling them the price, which is the part that brought the Restore Online Shoppersâ Confidence Act into the case. Co-founders Steve Shivers and Roger Parks are named personally.
doxoâs own explanation is the best line in the file. The company said âmany of the rules governing online payments were written in a different era.â
The rule in question is roughly: tell people what youâre charging them.
Nobody comparison-shopped for doxo. Thatâs the point. You went looking for your power company and got charged a fee by a business you never chose, for a step you didnât need, on a bill you could have paid for free. The $2.1 million is set aside for consumer redress, but the FTC hasnât announced a claims process. Donât sit around waiting for a check.
Do this now. Pull twelve months of bank and card statements and search them for âdoxo.â Look for a payment amount that doesnât match the bill it was supposed to cover, and for a small recurring charge you never placed.
Then pay your billers directly from here on. Type the address yourself, or use the account and autopay you already have with the company. The top result on a search page is bought, not earned. Thatâs worth remembering whether or not the advertiser is playing straight.
If you find fees you never agreed to, dispute them with your card issuer and file at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
The proposed order bars doxo from suggesting its payments are direct biller transactions, from using biller names, logos, or web addresses to imply sponsorship, and from collecting payment details before every fee is clearly disclosed. It also has to get express informed consent before charging for a subscription and give people an easy way to cancel.
A budget planner is the dull way to catch this whole category of charge, and dull is what works here. Fees like these survive by being too small to notice one month at a time.
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