Are You Being Overcharged Too?

Nothing irks me more than knowing I am being overcharged, whether purposely or accidentally. Except for finding out about the mistake too late to fix. We all know that life gets busy and we let things slip through the cracks. One of those things should NOT be reviewing your credit card statements monthly. Or if you are the more diligent type, you might want to do it weekly just to make sure things are in order.

In the past my husband and I both make the mistake of letting this important review task go for a few months and he lost $800 because a surf shop in Brazil charged us twice for the same surf board. I was charged over $500 by Globat for domain name services I told them I didn't want on the phone with their President. In both cases, our credit card company would not resolve the issue, nor would the company.

You think the credit card company is on your side, but actually they aren't. You have to go to extreme lengths, which might be more time than it is worth to have something resolved. I tried to get Mastercard to refund a $500 airplane ticket that I had cancelled on the phone with American and their phone service rep must have forgot to do it. I explained several times to Mastercard that I had made the call, but they sided with American Airlines. The funny thing is that I had re-booked and paid for a new flight as a result of cancelling that first one and they still didn't consider that evidence enough that I cancelled the flight. I probably could have wrote half a dozen more letters and made more phone calls until I pestered them so much that they reversed the charge, however, my time was more valuable at that time in life.

The reason I am writing this blog today isn't about the big ticket items above, it is about the small items. I have to ask myself, if you are only overcharged $1 for something, is it worth waiting 10 extra minutes for customer service to refund you? And if it isn't a $1, then is it $3? What amount of money are you willing to forgo to allow yourself to relax, kick back, ignore the monitor and the check out stand, and fully trust your cashier?

I was at the local grocery store today where it is one of the few places that sell raw milk since Whole Foods discontinued selling it. At this store, I was a little more conscientious than usual shopping since I know it costs 25% more for food there than at Whole Foods, which is already 25% more than your average grocery store. So when I was at the checkout stand and my tiny organic cauliflower rang up at $3.99, I figured that was high. I decided to double check the price on the way out and it was indeed what I thought: $2.99. I made the decision to tell the cashier to refund the difference. However, this seemed like such a big surprise to her that she didn't know what to do. They had to do price check and then I had to wait for her to finish 2 people ringing up their carts, and then she processed my $1. 10 minutes lost. I think 10 minutes of my time is worth more than a $1.

So if you want to avoid waiting for a refund (and wasting that 10 minutes), you might keep a watchful eye on the monitor as you are being rung up; whether it is Target (which is notorious for overcharging), Macy, or your local grocery store. Mistakes happen all too often, and whether you are just catching $1, $10, or even more, every little bit helps as you save for your financial plan so you can live the life you plan.

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I had to add one more comment a few days after the original post because I just noticed on my bank statement that is charged me the same $25 monthly charge twice. I wrote a note to them asking why and they refunded the double charge. So strange! At least I caught it this time.