The Internet has handed all sorts of really useful and impressive things to the people who use it. These days you can do everything from banking and investing to shopping, communicating, organizing protests and rallies, and conducting research all from the comfort of your own home.

One of the single most empowering things about the Internet is that it lets individuals (even lowly scumbags like me ) do all their financial juggling electronically — because of the reduced overhead of not running any “brick and mortar” branches, online banks can offer savings accounts with (much) higher interest rates (even in this craptacular economy, FNBO Direct’s online savings accounts make 3.25% instead of the paltry 1.05% I see offered at local credit unions (who generally pay at least a little better than commercial banks)). Because electronic debits can be done quickly and easily, I save $2.05 a month just by paying five bills electronically (instead of by mail — that savings is on the postage). Finally, because investment firms and banks want my business (i.e. they want my money), they advertise all their best offerings online for me to see at my leisure, while forums and websites review and advise on how these companies really treat their customers.

It’s faster for everyone involved, and less expensive, which means individuals like myself can put my paltry savings to work, while big entities like the average investment bank or the average “faceless corporation” can take that little bit of savings straight to their shareholders or to their R&D groups.

But, amidst this orgy of low-cost funds transfers and easy information retrieval are quite a few companies that just don’t seem to “get it.” In this post, I’ll be highlighting just a couple of these poor folks who so desperately need

The Brevard County Tax Collector’s Office … These folks handle, among many other things, collecting fees for vehicle and boat registrations. Their renewal notices helpfully remind you: “You can now make all payments online.” Following the URL they provide on their notice leads you to the Tax Collector’s website, where there’s a link for “renewals.” Clicking that takes you straight to the Department of Motor Vehicles website, where you can do all sorts of stuff (like changing your address, renewing or replacing your license, etc.). One of the tasks you can accomplish there is renewing your vehicle’s registration (i.e. ordering new tags). You can pay with a credit card or a direct debit from your checking account.

Convenient, eh? Well, not quite — it costs an extra dollar to do it this way. That’s right — whether you use a credit card or an electronic check, you’re going to fork over an extra buck for the privilege of doing it online. They still have to mail you the new tags, but you ostensibly save a day or two waiting for the local mail to deliver your form and check. Or you could just use a $0.41 stamp, ultimately spending $0.59 less than doing it online, and mail the damned thing in.

Florida Power and Light … These guys are a more interesting case. Their online site is surprisingly useful, providing you with electronic copies of your billing statements, showing your payment history, and, more usefully, showing your electric consumption history (this was very helpful in my successful defense last year of the lawsuit my idiot former landlord filed against me, which (among other things) claimed I ran up her electric bill).

If you pay your bill electronically by check (again, an electronic debit from a checking or savings account), they don’t charge you anything extra for making the payment. They count it as “paid” the day you submit the payment, even if they don’t actually debit the money for a day or two afterwards. That part’s really cool.

The confusing part comes from how they handle credit cards. You can’t pay with a credit card online at all. You can, however, call a special phone number to do it over the phone. Oh, did I mention it costs an extra five dollars if you do that? Not even American Express charges that kind of ungodly transaction fee, so methinks FPL is just skimming profits on this one.

The Real Cost of Doing Business

Because of the way these two groups work, the “usual” method I use to pay my bills (that nets me a handy 1.5% cash back) won’t work with them. Fortunately I only have to do the tag thing once a year, but the FPL thing bugs me — my average electric bill of $50 a month means $600 annually, which would score me an even $9 in cash back if I could use my regular method of payment with them.

Still, at least with FPL’s less-than-optimal payment methods, I still save money on a stamp.

It seems the tax man is the only one left who insists on wasting time & money by involving as many layers of bureaucracy as possible. Why doesn’t that surprise me?