Paying Fines Online – a simple sale

I am going to admit something.  I sometimes have a tendency to drive fast.  I can’t control it, call it an innate need.  When I was a youngster  I rode my tricycle fast, when I was pre pubescent, I rode my skateboard fast, and when I was a teen, I rode my ten-speed fast.  In those days, the worst thing that would happen is the odd scraped knee.  

Now that I have a car which has a tendency to go fast (it’s not my fault), there is the rare occasion when the police disagree with my interpretation of following the rules of the road.  The result?  A speeding fine!

Being a responsible adult and doing my part to contribute to the Government’s unlimited pot of money, I wanted to pay the fine online.  I am too busy to post a cheque, and couldn’t even tell you where my cheque book is.  I haven’t seen one in years.   I head to the New Zealand Police website hoping to find a simplistic method to pay the fine.  I budget 5 valuable minutes out of my important day to do the right thing.

The New Zealand Police home page consists of a long list of links, with absolutely nothing standing out.  I assumed revenue generation would be a big driver for this site, so I looked for headings which would indicate fine payments, but found nothing.  After further review, it was located under “Hot Topics”!  Of course!  The title of the link is “Pay an infringement fee”, even though all the documentation on the ticket uses other terminology such as “fines”.   The ticket doesn’t even explain where to go on the website.

Now that I have indicated my needs by clicking on the fine payment link, the next page takes me to FAQ’s relating to paying fines!  This information is presented too late on the buying process and is now adding friction to what I want to achieve.  

After I scroll down the page, I find a link, “pay an infringement fee online”, well below the fold, outside of the active window.  At this point, I am getting a little frustrated; my 5 minute time allocation has already been used up and I still haven’t found what I was looking for. 

I click on the “pay an infringement…” link and land on another page which states I will be paying a “Convenience fee”!:

A convenience fee of 3% per transaction is applied by our bank, Westpac New Zealand Limited. New Zealand Police does not receive any part of this fee. This fee appears as a separate transaction on your credit card statement and is referred to as “Westpac Convenience Fee”.

At this point I feel I should be charging the New Zealand Police a “Lack of Convenience Fee” for the trouble I have gone through to get to this stage.  Now that I am finally where I want to be, the Police spring a surprise charge right at the final step of closing the sale.  Not happy.

The reasoning behind the New Zealand Police website applying fees is puzzling.  The New Zealand Police have publicly stated the trouble faced with the recovery of unpaid fines and the substantial operational costs in chasing individuals to pay. 

The New Zealand Police are making the payment option hard to find, then penalising people for using it.  If anything, the New Zealand Police should be offering discounts for online fine payments and absorbing the Westpac fee.  They would still come out ahead. 

The buying process for those looking to deal with fines (or infringement fees) is a very linear process, more so than common eCommerce business models.  No persuasion is required; visitors are already motivated to hand over money and just want to be converted.  There is a lot of money to be made and a lot of operational costs to be saved.

The “convenience fee” is one of the single most effective methods in creating a barrier to transacting payments online. 

If anyone from the New Zealand Police is reading this, tell your superiors to contact Alkemi.  While you are at it, ask them if they could pay my fine.