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Check your statements and receipts
By Daphne | November 6, 2007
Check your bills and receipts.
If you don’t already do this, you should. There are times when the shelf tags and physical tags (if any) are not the same. So when you take your item to the register to be scanned, then the price isn’t the same. If you are not paying attention you could over pay. If an item is on sale and the price change was not entered into the computer system, then you will end up paying more. Just show the cashier the paper or they will send someone to check the price. It may take a few minutes but the money you save by not over paying will really add up.
Automatic bill pay is great right? Receiving e-statements helps save trees. Electronic payments and statements will only help if you make sure that your bill is correct. If you are not checking the statement that you receive then you will become a prime target for additional fees being added to your bill without your knowledge.
Check your bills, receipts, and statements. It is easier to bring a problem to a cashier’s attention, than to a company that bills you electronically. That still doesn’t mean that you should not check your bill. Consider this if an additional 3 or 4 cents was added to your bill each time and you didn’t know it but paid anyway it wouldn’t seem like much. But if you and thousands of others were charged 3 or 4 cents extra for something that really adds up. The money may end up in the coffers of a store or it could end up in the coffers of a person who wants to try and see if you will not notice the small amount you were charged and then bilk you for more money in the future.
Before I refinanced my mortgage the payment was automatically deducted by a certain date each month. One month I saw that I was paying an additional 9 cents. When I checked my statement, it seems that human error on the part of the person entering the initial request miskeyed a 9 instead of a 0. No big deal because the money was going toward extra principal. I just wanted to make sure though. Sometimes people are charged for “extra” services through phone scams and other things.
Keep an eye on your bill.
Topics: November 2007 |