Hi,

I was wondering if anyone came acros this system before? And if you did, do you find this new system of paying reasonable or a rip-off? It sounds to me that my real estate agent had trouble juggling with incoming rent payments and sending off the money to the right people. They had trouble identifying who had paid their rent and hasn't. Therefore, they signed up with rentpay.com.au to handle all their rent payments. I have no problems with them engaging a 3rd party solutions provider to manage their rent payment, but I do mind paying the 3 dollar fee for becoming a RentPay member!

I did agree to pay using bpay and signed against it in my tenancy agreement while I was with my previous real estate agent (yes, the property has changed hands) but I was not charged additional fees for making payments through the BPAY facility. I would like to know if there are others out there who face similar situations.

 Cheers

Hi,

We have just recently moved out of our rented premises but the realestate agent that we had to deal with also had this new system where they automatically deducted the rent but the bank fee was put on to our rent for the transaction. I think it is disgusting, but if we wanted to rent any of there properties then this is the only way they would accept the rent being paid.

It is unbelievable what the realestate agents can get away with.

Littlewill

You'd (or I'd) think they would cover the $3.00.

Smart People make money.

Smarter people do it without the customers noticing..

Hi Littlewill,

I'm sorry to hear that you got hit with the same fees. I recently moved out as well only to find out that the new real estate agent uses rentpay as well. By stroke of luck, the landlord lives right next to us and has requested that we deal with him personally. Therefore I only need to direct debit the rent to him instead of some 3rd party bloodsucking parasite.

If there are any landlords reading this, please make the world a better place and ask for direct payment. As far as I know, I have rang up consumer affairs before and the law states that the tenant should be paying only the rent, nothing more nothing less. I hope this piece of information helps.

 Cheers

Hi - 

Just a little about Rentpay....Its pretty close to illegal. And if you real estate agent tells you you have to switch...say NO!

The tenancy act (vic) makes it illegal for an estate agent / landlord to charge ANYTHING other than rent and bond. No fees or charges are permissable.

Also - any changes to your payment method is a changes to your terms of your tenancy agreeement, which cannot happen without your EXPLICT approval.

My realestate agent (Sweeney) tried to tell me I HAD to change to RentPay. When I complained to them, they caved and said that cash/bank cheque and money order where also an option. When I complained further to Consumer Victoria (on the basis that Bank Cheques and Money Orders also have a cost, and cash is unsafe - I believe it is a fundamental right to pay your free safely and for free) - they reinstated my free BPay card.

Don't be fooled by RentPay. I suspect they have kick back for agents/landlords, and the renter is subsidising it.

Spread the word. 

Hi Paul,

 I recently had a chat with a Choice journalist to discuss this issue. She should be publishing the story shortly. In the mean time, perhaps someone could inform today/tonight as well to get this ball rolling faster.

The following is a link to the Victorian Tenant's Union. She encouraged me to lodge a complain with them and I encourage you to do so as well. Unfortunately, according to my agents, I had signed on an agreement saying that I would pay my rent via BPay. Not wishing to go through the hassle, I got stung by rent pay for 3 months before I shifted out. Apparently, if you do not ring up RentPay to cancel your account, they will continue to direct debit the monthly fee from your bank account irregardless if you have made use of their so called "convenient service".

As I said before, if this company is legal, then it must be legal to have GasPay, MobilePay, WaterPay or PowerPay. Pretty creative huh?

http://www.tuv.org.au/homepage.aspx

I have moved from one rented premises to another. With previous property manager gave us a Bpay card and as I was living in a shared house, we just bpay'd half the rent each.

In the new premises I have to pay first month rent in next couple of days. I started signing up to rentpay and realised the $3 fee charged. It seemed odd so I looked through the information further. According to the flyer that I got from the agent, rentpay is the most efficient and cost effective way to pay rent. IT shows a graph which suggests that withdrawing cash costs me about $6 in over-the-counter fees (????) then it says getting a cheque or moneyorder and posting it costs around $18-$20. But no fear, rentpay is only $3 a month.

This is ludicrous and that's my legal opinion (I'm a lawyer too by the way!). It's downright misleading as it suggests that logging into my internet banking and automatically setting a payment day for every month (free) or simply bpaying (free) or doing a bank-to-bank transfer (free) is so expensive and inconvenient, yet for only $3 a month, they can give me a bpay number or auspost number or, what appears to be, a simple direct debit.

If you ask me, I think this rentpay system is a sham. It's agents simply unable to do their book-keeping so they use an electronic one, but charge us the fee for doing so. But it's not just the money. As I said, I'm a shared renter, but rentpay only allows one registration and payment. This means that my housemate has to transfer the money to me and then I have to pay the rent in one big "go". How is this a more convenient method than the dozen free alternatives I can think of.

I'm not using it and demanding an alternative arrangement from my property manager tomorrow.