NEC Retail is part of a not-for-profit, customer owned company. NEC Retail believes you should only pay for the services you use. As most NEC Retail consumers still mail their payments or use bank draft, we aren't yet ready to pass on the cost of online and telephone payment services to all of our consumers. If in the future, most NEC Retail customers begin to use this service, we will consider offering it as a basic customer service and the cost will be built into the rate structure. Until then, this service is provided by a third party vendor and we would not be able to provide the service to you without passing along their fee. We want to offer this payment option for free, but for now those who use it must pay a convenience fee for the service equal to: