The Secrets of Fabulous Wealth: A Pitting of Small Incorrect Charges

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Here’s the scheme. I think you’ll see that it’s fool-proof:

  1. Offer some good or services. It doesn’t matter what it is, really. But it’s ideal if consumers are forced to choose you if they want a general kind of product. Think cable internet. Or service for a particular brand of phone.

  2. Incorrectly bill the customer-victim by $X, where X is an amount less than the amount that the victim values Y time is takes to correct the error. You don’t really have to allow them to correct the error since no one is going to sue you over $10. (In fact, make it $50.) But some clever chap might start a class action. So, allow some error-correction mechanism that takes Y hours, just to be safe.

  3. Profit! Re-invest some of the money in coming up with more ways to incorrectly charge your customers while lobbying against laws that inject competition into your market.

The real beauty of it is that even when, in the worst-case scenario, you gain a reputation for being a no-good company full of idiots (e.g. Verizon), it’s not really gonna change your bottom line. Remember, the key is small amounts of money over lots of customers. Your fraudulent charges could easily number in the millions without breaking a sweat.

Here are a few more tips: have a single contact person who can be reached by phone and is only available weekdays from 10-4; even better, require billing disputes to be in writing (and add $.42 to your fraudulent charges!); do not, under any circumstances, hire customer service representatives with better than a third grade education; and above all, have fun. Good luck!

2

I could write a very long Pit thread about my delightful experiences with Verizon. But the one most relevant to this thread is that they charged me for a modem that was supposed to be free with my Internet service. Actually, they didn’t even send me the modem at first, they sent me a box with a cord and an adapter for the phone outlet, but no actual modem. So I had to call to get them to send that, and then they billed me for it.

It took several phone calls to get this straightened out, and even then they said I had to pay the charge but they’d credit it to my next bill. It took a couple of billing cycles for this to actually occur, though. In the meantime, they were earning interest off the money I’d paid them for something that was supposed to be free.

Oh yeah, on one of the many phone calls I had to make to get this and other problems straightened out, the phone rep asked me if I’d be interested in a free 30 day trial of an online game package. (This was right before he was going to forward me to someone else.) I said no. He asked why, since it was FREE. I said I knew they’d find some way to charge me for it, and I didn’t want it. The phone rep assured me that this would not happen, he said at the end of the trial period I’d receive an e-mail asking me if I wanted to subscribe to the game package and I’d only be charged if I said yes. I made the mistake of saying fine, whatever, just forward my call.

Of course there was never any “Do you want to subscribe to this game package?” email. At the end of 30 days they just started charging me for the game service, which I’d never even used. I called up again to tell them that I wasn’t paying for a service I’d never ordered and that I’d explicitly been told would not automatically be added to my account at the end of the trial period. And once again I got “Oh, you have to pay but we’ll credit it to your next bill”. In fairness they did do this, but I’m sure they wouldn’t have if I hadn’t complained, and either way they got my money for a month or more.

IIRC, it was six months before I got a bill from Verizon that reflected the money I owed them for the services I had actually ordered.

3

My battle with BofA only ended when I closed my account.

The story: I had a balance that was at 0%. Someone charged $7.19 to my card. I called to dispute it and they credited me.

And then charged interest the next month. I called. They reversed it.

And then charged interest the next month. I called. They reversed it.

And then charged interest the next month. I called. They reversed it.

And then charged interest the next month. I didn’t call.

And then charged interest the next month. I called about both months. They reversed it. Twice.

And then charged interest the next month. I didn’t call.

And then charged interest the next month. We were even.

And then charged interest the next month. I called and canceled the card.

4

The fly in your ointment is the class action suit brought by some lawyer who will get a multi-million dollar payday while giving your customers a coupon for future services. Eww.

5

This reminds me of when my wife’s CapitalOne card was stolen. We immediately called and reported the card stolen and asked for the account to be closed. Two days later, they authorized $175 worth of charges on it, which they then sent us a bill for every month for six months, even though each time, we called and spoke to customer service who assured us that 1) we were not responsible for the charges, 2) they had been reversed as fraudulent and that the card now had a $0 balance, and 3) they were closing the account immediately. Each time, there was no record of the previous alleged account closings. My favorite part was when I tried to get the full name and/or some kind of identification number for the person in the fraud department that I was talking to, and all he would give me was the name “Sam.” When I asked how I could identify him if I were to call in and refer to this call, he said, “I’m just Sam in the fraud department. I’m the only Sam here.” I said, “what if they hire another Sam?” His reply? “They won’t.” Sam’s supervisor confirmed their policy of not giving you any way of identifying the people you talk to, and also would only identify himself by first name. I’ve never been so happy to finally have an account closed.

6

Au contraire. As noted in the OP:

7

I have probably told this tale before, but it got better a few days ago. We owed my wife’s former mobile provider $0.13. They have no means of paying them $0.13 since their minimum payment is $1. Or maybe you can pay them $0.13 but not by any means that doesn’t involve a lot more than $0.87 of my/my wife’s time. So I paid them $1. They now owe us $0.87.

This was many years ago. I’m guessing three or four years ago. They still send us a statement every month demanding we pay them -$0.87. We have phoned them and emailed them and said “its OK, really, just have the $0.87, we can afford it (it’s a stretch, but we’ll be OK) and stop wasting stamps and paper”. They agreed to do so. The statements keep coming.

A few days ago they wrote to say they are moving to emailed statements. And that if we do not opt into emailed statements they will be charging a couple of bucks per statement “mailing fee”.

You can see where this is going to go, can’t you?

8

You should threaten to sue them for the interest.

9

I have a fun one (ok, maybe it’s a tangent from the OP, but it is amazing):

We’re in a hole with one of our credit cards. In August, we got into a program with them were we’d make two $600 payments, one in August and one in September, and then we’d be back in good standing. Groovy. I ok them to do a check-by-phone for August. I then go to our online banking with BofA and post date a payment for September.

September rolls around and we’re doing a spot check of our balance. WTF?? The credit card had taken the September $600 as a check-by-phone the day before. But there is the payment I post-dated back in August, still pending to go through the next day! So two payments, one taken by the card and one scheduled by us. No way we can afford to send $1200 to one card in one month.

I call BofA. They say they can’t reverse the duplicate payment because it’s already in the electronic ether. I call the card. They say they can’t reverse the duplicate payment because it hadn’t actually arrived in their coffers yet. I call BofA back, and get a Magic Person who she can reverse the pending duplicate payment if we do a conference call with the credit card to confirm that it is indeed a duplicate payment. We get the card on the phone with us. The credit card guy confirms that they’ve already received September’s $600 and any additional moneys would be extra. Magic Bank girl (Percilla), does her thing and we see the duplicate payment vanish from our online statement. Yay! Disaster averted!

Until it shows up again the next day, along with a long list of nickle and dime transactions from days before when we thought all was right in the world, each of which are now overdraft transactions because that duplicate payment overdrew us. And, every time we overdraw, the bank charges us $35 per transaction. (Yes, we have overdraft protection linked to our savings account, but the duplicate payment drained the savings.)

Between the crater the duplicate payment made, the $100 worth of random transactions, and the overdraw fees, we ended up more than $1000 in the red.

We called the bank again, and they claim they know nothing of anyone named Percilla, that what we say happened the day before is flatly impossible, and that if we want the payment back, we’ll have to speak to the credit card company. We call the card. They said we’d have their decision on the matter in 30 days. In the mean time, BofA says that, if the card agrees to reverse the payment, then they will reverse the overdraft charges we incurred as a result of the duplicate payment. We begin to not hold our breath on any of this.

Miracle of miracles, the credit card actually credited back the duplicate payment! We got a check in the mail last week. Hooray! Money for cat litter! We deposit it after I make a xerox of it to take as proof to get the overdraft charges reversed once the money clears. Because it’s an out-of-state check BofA puts a hold on the check and tell us it’ll clear in no longer than 5 business days. Fine and dandy.

After two business days, we see in our online banking that the check has cleared! Yay! Not to be fooled twice, we let it sit for half an hour and check again. Still there! We make a print out of the page showing the check as cleared.

We go buy groceries.

We come back and check one last time. MOTHER FUCKING THING WAS LISTED AS ON HOLD AGAIN!! And now those groceries have made us overdrawn, again!!

This month was the one month in the year where I get 3 paychecks. I was going to replace the rear windshield of our car with that paycheck, the one that busted after some jackass chucked a beer bottle at it.

I’m getting sick of my life right now.

10

T-Mobile charged me an extra $300 as deposit when I switched to a family line with my brother. I called them, they said it was a mistake and would fix it.

They didn’t fix it for months. I had to constantly harrass them. Each time they were unfailingly polite, oh, sorry, this must be so frustrating for you, we’ll make this right straight away.

They finally fixed it four months later.

11

In a sufficiently advanced capitalist society, fraud is indistinguishable from incompetence.

I like the idea of asking for the interest on mistaken deductions. I think I’ll try that next time.

12

I learned to make print outs of online accounts at the time of viewing to show it did indeed say what I said it said at the time of viewing on accounts that were in flux. I don’t try any corrections until after at week has gone by for prior corrections to clear and new ones not foul up the old ones. This is a situation where haste makes waste and lots of frustrated hair pulling.

I learned to not call about a benefit account when it was reviewed, because it would have the next month’s money added on it. Just save the money for next month when it won’t be credited. Trying to correct what was an overage this month causes a huge mess which I can’t afford to have happen.

13

I’m moving this from The BBQ Pit to Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share, with no offense intended to the OP.
**
Gfactor**
Pit Moderator

14

Many years ago, my husband and I both had cell phones on Verizon. At the time, no-roaming/no-long-distance-charges plans were not as common, and we thought it wasn’t worth it to get. We didn’t travel far at the time - except from our area (Chicago suburbs) up to Madison, WI, and nearby areas. The calling map Verizon had showed that Madison was within our “no-roaming” area and would count as a local call. Excellent.

We traveled to Madison and told our friends to call our cell phones to get in contact with us/meet up, etc. We didn’t get a call when expected. Our phones - were showing as being in a roaming area. :smack: We were on the university’s campus in a well-traveled area, and wherever we went the phones didn’t switch out of roaming. “Rebooting” the phones didn’t help either. My husband called to check his voice mail, and there were calls there, and no notifications on the phone! Meeting with people became an annoying version of phone tag.

Then the bill came. Lots of long distance charges for the calls there, including the calls to check voice mail! We were livid, and my husband called to complain. A few times. He tried everything he could, and when it wasn’t subtly insinuated that he was mistaken about what he was told about the plan/where he was, he was essentially told ‘well that shouldn’t have happened, but we aren’t going to do anything about it.’ Of course we had about a year left in the contract, which is what he was informed of when he threatened to go elsewhere, and the penalty for leaving was pretty huge. Certainly way more than the extra phone charges.

So we waited out the contract, and transferred out the phone numbers when it ended. He called to inform them, and suddenly they became very concerned about our problem. Too late, so sorry…

15

Years ago, I got a call from the cable company asking if I’d be home on a certain day. I asked why, and they said a technician needed to get into my apartment to replace the cable box. They promised that the new box would give me improved reception.

Note that they didn’t ask if I wanted this. They just said they needed to replace it.

So the guy came in and replaced the analog box with a digital one. Before he left, he had me sign a paper saying that he’d done the work. Oh yeah, and now I’d be getting all of the premium movie stations for free.

After he left, I took a closer look at what I’d signed. (Yeah, my bad for not reading it before signing, and my bad for not assuming the guy outright lied to me.) It seems that I’d requested the upgrade and agreed to a higher monthly fee. Now, it wasn’t that much more expensive, and the upgrade was freakin’ awesome, so it was something I could live with. But they were still deceptive in their business practices.

Oh, and it was great having all of the premium movie channels for free. Free for a month, that is. They didn’t tell me I had to opt out after that or I’d be charged. Which I was.

Bastards.

16

Ferret Herder just north of Madison was a junction of 3 service areas for cell phone coverage that landed almost on my town. The people here had lots of service area problems. It was too bad they didn’t sell areas of coverage that radiated from hubs close to your home. This was before the proliferation of cell towers and lots of competition so you were just out of luck back then.

17

I once dealt with a company that had apparently discovered the key to bouncing back from insolvency: Forgery!

The wife and I had dealt with one of those payday loan companies. It was a mom 'n pop independent company, and despite knowing the pitfalls of these things, we took out loans from them because they had a pretty impressive policy: You could take out money with the associated fees based on the amount borrowed, and then pay it back in small amounts over the course of however long you work out with absolutely no interest. It was better even than banks offer. I wondered how they could make money that way.

Well, we paid off bits here and there, about $50 every other week for a few months, and then, upon a visit to make my payment in cash, discovered how they made money: They didn’t. The eviction notice on the door to the office made that abundantly clear. So I couldn’t make my payment and had no idea how to contact them to arrange it, since they left no forwarding address or phone number. So I returned home.

About a month later I get a call from some guy who claims to be the owner of the erstwhile company asking if we can arrange payment for the balance. Now, not being able to afford such a lump sum all at once I state that I can continue to make regular payments as I had been doing. He then tries to set up a meeting to do so. On a street corner. With a cheque made out to him personally. Now, I don’t know this guy from Adam; I’d never met him, didn’t even know his name, so for all I know this was some scammer. I tell the guy that this was a bit skeevy and I wasn’t going to make any such deal like that unless I can make it out to the company and get a receipt on company stationery to prove that I made payment and it was indeed being applied to the balance of the account and not lining some scammer’s pocket, 'cos there was no way I was going to give some stranger my banking details without legally binding assurances.

So the call ends with him telling me he’ll get back to me, and I don’t hear anything from him again. A couple of months later I’m checking to make sure my paycheque cleared and I discover that I’m short about $600. This was an emergency situation since I had bills to cover and food ti buy, and what was left in my account after this cheque cleared was a pittance. So after a WTF moment I call up my bank and they tell me that they cleared a cheque … to the guy who claimed to own the former payday loan company. I tell them I never wrote them a cheque, so they investigate.

Turns out the cheque had been visibly and obviously altered. He had taken an old cheque I wrote them, scratched out the company name and replaced it with his own, and then altered the amount of the cheque. I ask to come in and see this cheque, and upon looking at it, it was painfully obvious. Scratch marks over the name and amounts and a new name and amount entered. The changes weren’t even initialed – not that any initials other than my own in my handwriting would have been acceptable anyway. The manager I spoke with agreed that this cheque never should have been cleared, so the situation got rectified, but all told it took a week for everything to settle down, and in the mean time I was in financial dire straits.

I never did hear from the guy again – it’s entirely possible the dude might have been smacked either by the bank and/or the law for fraudulently altering a legal instrument. Whatever the case, in the end I never did have to pay back the balance, so I guess I ended up with a bonus, but I called it payback for trying to screw me over with a forged document.

18

I like this a lot (although I think the ‘a’ should be ‘any’).

Perhaps it will catch on as a new netmeme and make you famous.

19

Early this year I switched from cable to DirecTV. Part of the sign-up package included three free months for free premium channels. When I received my bill each month it showed a charge for the premium channels and a credit for the same amount. When my three months were about to expire I had the foresight to call to verify whether they would automatically stop billing me for the premium channels or if I needed to opt out. Of course, I was told that unless I specifically opted out, they would continue to charge me for them. I refrained from asking how many people ended up paying for a month of service they didn’t want because of this practice.

I do remember getting a similar deal when I had signed up for cable once, but at that time the service (and the billing) automatically stopped after the trial period ended, I guess the new business model of not telling people they had to opt out proved more profitable.

20

Sprint has been pissing me off terribly lately. They keep moving my due date by 6-10 days and then charging me a late fee. I wouldn’t even care if they moved my due date if they would send me a bill and let me know when my payment was due. I had signed up for the e-bills because I moved 5 months ago and I have yet to receive a single e-bill from them. I finally signed up for automatic debits because I didn’t want to keep paying late fees and the first month they didn’t draft the payment and charged me a late fee anyway.