I’ve periodically told my kids that’s it’s important to pay attention when you go shopping, and since I’ve had several instances this past week that came up, I thought I’d share this thought with you.
Don’t assume that whatever you’re charged is what you’re supposed to be charged. Sale items don’t always ring up as such, and some stores have a policy that if you’re mischarged for an item, they’ll give you the item for free. But even without that policy, pay attention when you’re checking out in the grocery that everything has scanned properly. The thrift store I’ve shopped in for years has a new computer system, one that makes it almost impossible to see if you’re being charge correctly when you check out, as the discounted price doesn’t show up on the screen. It took me fifteen minutes after I got home to figure it out last week (I couldn’t work it out in the store, it was way too complicated), and it had six errors on it. Fortunately, the mistakes evened out – I was overcharged for some things, undercharged for one, and not charged at all for another – so I didn’t need to go back. By the way, I feel that if there’s an error of any sort, even not in your favor, that it should be corrected. A number of times I’ve gone to customer service (this happened again last week at the grocery store for a 9.95 charge) when an item wasn’t on my bill after checking out that should have been, and asked them to ring up the missing item so that I could pay for it. Spending your money responsibly is important, but being ethical is even more important, and I don’t believe there are any true savings on dishonestly aquired money or things.
Last week I noticed that I was credited only $14.50 for a rebate I submitted online to my drugstore, instead of $20. When I saw that and realized I had thrown away my receipt, I didn’t think I’d have much luck getting the full rebate (since I couldn’t ‘prove’ what I paid), but I called anyway to ask about it. They didn’t ask for my receipt (because they were charging the same amount on this across the country in conjunction with the rebate, so they knew what I said I paid was true), told me it was a processing error, and refunded the $5.50 immediately (and since I had it put on my store gift card, I received another 10% on top of that!). So it took me less than five minutes to ‘earn’ $6.
Several days ago I called my phone company to remove one of the additional services I have for my line, after seeing that we really don’t use it and the extra cost isn’t being justified. While I was on the phone, the customer service rep told me that they would take the monthly charge of $5.50 for that feature off, but would also lower my monthly total bill by another $10.99 (it’s a special they’re giving to those who call to make changes, it seems, not advertised), increase my internet connection speed, and otherwise keep all the same features. I’ll get this price for another year, before it will shift back to the regular price I’m paying. I was on the phone for a few minutes, and that will save us $16.50 every month (not including the tax on that) – it may not seem like a lot of money, but we’ll have over $240 more in our pockets in the course of a year than if I hadn’t made the call.
Today I was expecting a delivery that I paid extra for in order to get it quickly. Though the company emailed to say it would be here today, it never showed up. I called the company (and waited on the line for at least ten minutes until I got a rep – I browsed the internet and checked my emails while I waited), and was told that it wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow. I told them that the email they sent said it would be here today, and offered to forward it to the rep so he could see for himself. No need, he assured me. The full amount for the rush shipping (over $38) was refunded to my credit card while I was still on the line. Was it worth the time? I thought so…
Though I usually try to pay a little extra on the mortgage every month, I’ve never been able to do more than that. Our mortgage is a significant portion of our take home pay, but after two years, for the first time last month I was able to make an extra month’s payment. When I paid it, I clearly labelled it ‘additional principal’. Imagine my surprise when my mortgage statement came a couple of weeks later, and said that this month’s bill was paid, but the principal wasn’t decreased at all! They had applied my principal payment towards the coming month’s payment (meaning mostly interest). I called the bank to straighten this out, and had a chance to practice being patient as the representative repeatedly told me that I had paid my mortgage payment for this month so I didn’t need to send in anything else until next month. Finally she looked at the records and agreed that I did make an extra payment, but because it wasn’t labelled as intended to go towards principal, they automatically apply it in a way that benefits them (she didn’t use those words to explain it :)), and told me that I was at fault for not making a note of it. I told her it had been labelled (and since I pay online, it would be very, very easy to show proof of this), and she quickly apologized for their error and took care of properly crediting it to our future principal. This would be fun to figure out how much we saved by following up with the bank, as it saved us another 28 years of interest at 6.5% – I can’t figure that out in my head, with all the amortization rates, but I’m sure it’s significant.
None of these are earthshaking or exciting, but little things add up, and it all comes from paying attention to the details. I see this as a matter of being a good steward of the money that we have – I gladly pay what I need to for the services or goods we buy, but it’s senseless to spend unnecessarily for no additional benefit!
Avivah
