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“Attention! Your fee is due,” read the alert.
My husband and I went to Brooksville, Fla. for spring break to visit my mother. After enjoying a fun-filled, adventurous Wednesday at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay, we ate at the Olive Garden, then came back to Brooksville to crash at my mom’s house. After taking a shower, I put on my pajamas and jumped on the computer.
Luckily, I happened to check my UWG e-mail account that night. To my surprise, an email in my inbox read, “SPRING BALANCE DUE IMMEDIATELY!” This caught my attention, because I thought that I had paid all my fees at the beginning of the semester. I have never had to pay fees in the middle of the semester in the three years I’ve been at UWG. I opened it and it said that I had a $15 fee to be paid in full before I can register for fall semester 2010 classes.
Although it was only $15 that had to be paid, it really frustrated me. First of all, why was I getting this message during spring break? There wasn’t anything that I could do about it. Also, why wasn’t this fee addressed to me in the beginning of the semester? And why wasn’t this mysterious fee showing up in my Banweb account?
Monday rolled around and I called the Bursar’s Office hoping to get an answer to all of this. The lady answering the phone was not very helpful. She told me that I had a fee, and that I had already paid it. I asked her why I was getting charged for the fee (again) over spring break, and she replied, “I don’t know. All the account says online is that you have a fee due and you paid it.”
So, what does all of this mean? Obviously, I grudgingly paid my fee, but does this mean that UWG can charge you whenever they like? I hope not! Believe it or not, I could have lived off of that $15 the week after spring break. I could have put gas in my car, gotten something to eat or gotten a new pair of work pants. Instead, I had to pay a mysterious tuition fee.
With all of the budget cut worries and tuition fee hikes, all I can do to help this from happening to anyone else is to remind students to check their Banweb accounts often. Check your myUWG e-mail and your tuition statements. It might be a pain to check these things over your spring, fall or summer break, but in the end it will be worth it. Also, try going to the office to talk to someone in person. I made the mistake of calling, but perhaps they would have been more helpful if I would have talked to them face to face.
Be aware! Don’t pick out all of your classes, be advised and ready to register at midnight the day you are scheduled just to find out that you can’t because you have a mysterious tuition fee due.
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