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Cost to you to pay your water bill online: Zero dollars.

Cost to you to pay your cable bill online: Zero dollars.

Cost to you to pay your PNM bill online: It isn't priceless.

It's $2.95 to make a one-time transaction, in fact.

But PNM doesn't get any of the money.

That charge is a "convenience fee" charged by Bill Matrix, the contractor that runs PNM's online billing - and it makes PNM perhaps the only utility in the Albuquerque area that charges you a fee to pay your bill online.

"There's a fee for paying with a credit card - that can be over 2 percent" of the total bill, said Jerry Kreitman, executive account manager at Bill Matrix. "We get a small portion of the fee, because we provide all the services and technology. PNM gets no part of that money."

PNM officials said they're just being upfront with the costs. The Public Regulatory Commission won't let the company recover the costs through service charges without prior approval, said Jeff Buell, a spokesman.

Comcast and other companies can hide those fees, he added.

"Comcast is a competitive utility and we're regulated, so they're able to recover that cost through service charges," Buell said. "We're not."

But that's not entirely true, said Tiffany Payne, a spokeswoman for Comcast.

Comcast just eats the fees and lets its 220,000 New Mexico customers pay online for free, Payne said.

"It isn't hidden in the overall costs," Payne said. "Nationwide, we don't charge customers to pay on the Internet. Some customers want to pay online; some want to pay by mail; it's their choice."

That's true for the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, as well, said David Morris, a spokesman.

"It's worth shouldering that minor financial burden for the convenience of our customers," Morris said.

An average of 13,245 out of 171,000 water utility customers use online bill paying each month, he said.

The cost to the utility for each online transaction is $1.79. If somebody pays in person, it costs $2.65, because of handling and transportation to the bank, Morris said.

Mail is still the cheapest, at 26 cents per transaction, and direct deposit - or recurring payments drawn directly out of your bank account or from your credit card - costs 48 cents per transaction, Morris said.

PNM customers can get recurring payments drawn from their bank or credit card for free through a program that started in the summer, and they can see the charges before they're drawn from their accounts, Buell said.

But many online customers are wary of signing up for automatic payments, because they don't get to approve the bill before the money is taken from their account, although Buell points out that customers can call PNM if they see a problem with the automatic bill and get the payment changed.

Despite what other companies in the area do, PNM has no plans to change its one-time online billing practices in the near future, Buell added.

"It does represent a significant business cost," he said.