(a) The Commission may not require advance payment of estimated FOIA fees except as provided in paragraph (b) or where the Commission estimates or determines that allowable charges that a requester may be required to pay are likely to exceed $250.00 and the requester has no history of payment. Where allowable charges are likely to exceed $250.00 and the requester has a history of prompt payment of FOIA fees the Commission may notify the requester of the estimated cost and obtain satisfactory assurance of full payment. Notification that fees may exceed $250.00 is not, however, a prerequisite for collecting fees above that amount.

(b) Where a requester has previously failed to pay a fee charged in a timely fashion (i.e., within 30 days of the date of the billing), the Commission may require the requester to pay the full amount owed plus any applicable interest as provided in §0.468, and to make an advance payment of the full amount of the estimated fee before the Commission begins to process a new request or a pending request from that requester.

(c) When the Commission acts under paragraph (a) of this section, the administrative time limits prescribed in §§0.461(g) and (k) (i.e., twenty business days from receipt of initial requests and twenty business days from receipt of appeals from initial denials, plus permissible extensions of these time limits (see §0.461(g)(1)(i) through (iii) and §0.461(k)(1)(i) through (iii)) will begin only after the agency has received the fee payments described in this section. See §0.461(e)(2)(ii) and §0.467(e)(2).