Defending a disputed credit card charge will definitely cost them time and money and you might even win if you can show the credit card people where they say they won’t bill you before the trial is over… as well as the date range of the free trial.
I know working in the hotel industry in college the rule was very simple: did the customer stay in the room or not? If they did, they paid. If they didn’t and they disputed the charge, they didn’t pay.
Makes no difference that the whole point of the credit card hold is to protect the hotel owner from lost revenue due to not selling your room to someone else. Only matters if you actually stayed there.
So what’s in the written policy that you agreed to and how the credit card companies adjudicate matters are NOT necessarily the same.
You could take them to small claims court every month they charge you (or whatever the frequency is). Since the contract was signed by you in your state, your local court has jurisdiction. That means they either have to send someone to your state or hire counsel where you live. In reality, they will probably ignore the summons and the court will provide you with a summary judgement. You can then docket the claim which will show up any time they go looking for funds. There is a risk this could backfire and you end up owing their fees for counsel.
I barely check my retirement savings once a year. I spent enough time researching this stuff that I’m quite confident that ignoring it is the best way to success for that stuff. Money goes in once a month in a predetermined allocation, and maybe once a year I rebalance.
I don’t even know what I’d be checking for. my allocation is off maybe? Even if it was, studies have shown that rebalancing more than once a year doesn’t improve overall performance anyway. I certainly wouldn’t be checking performance of equities, because really, wtf does that even mean on a daily or weekly basis? Nothing.
Course, I got burned a couple of times when I was younger (small amounts thankfully) doing stupid consumer level stuff. Learned my lesson well.
I don’t rebalance anything. I’m invested in target date funds appropriate for my desired retirement date. Mostly it’s just a hobby, and lately a very depressing one. I make sure I’m projected to have enough to retire, increase or decrease my contribution rates every once in a while, and document all my sources of retirement (a few different 401k’s and IRA’s I’m too lazy to go to a notary to have transferred into a single account, my HSA, a cash balance plan, and deferred comp) twice a month.
back in the early '00’s or so, I boughtindividual stock in a grocery delivery company. Because it’s definitely going to be a thing, how could it not. That money went to $0.
near the same time I put I dunno, $20K? into tech funds on the recommendation of a financial guy I knew and trusted. about 10 years later, guess how much I had. About $20K. And like, tech funds can’t go anywhere but up right?
TIL that rationalizing performance of equities doesn’t work. Ignore stuff that makes ‘good sense’ and trust the statistics.
Currently dealing with a second attempt at a scam using a clone of my uncle’s Facebook account, telling me if I send $500 in gift cards to a lawyer, the government will give me several thousand dollars in free money.
Stringing the guy along as long as possible. It’s a thin line being stupid enough to make them continue but not so stupid they stop. 30 minutes and 14 messages deep so far.
I like that, unfortunately I’ve already reported the profile and blocked him.
I was attempting to claim his scam link was broken and could I instead have an email address. Was going to make a fake email and start sending him nearly what he wanted but keep missing the mark and give nothing useful. He got boring though.
My bank typically has great customer service. They recently charged a check against one of my savings accounts. I rarely use this savings account so it was a huge surprise when it decreased. Thankfully, they post images of all checks. This check was very clearly written by a different customer with a different account number. The very last digit of the account number is slightly obscured by the signature and without this last digit the account # matches mine, so I can understand the mistake.
What irritates me is that I even though I pointed out the mistake, and a human can easily verify it was the bank’s mistake by visually inspecting the image, I am still required to dispute the charge and wait 10 days before they credit my account for the money they stole from me. IMO, they should credit me immediately given they are the ones who screwed up. This isn’t a disputed charge against some random 3rd party, the bank f’ed up and should step up.
One time I was paying a landscaper cash and I went to withdraw the money… I think maybe it was $600. And I could see there was a line inside so I went to the ATM because the landscaper was at home waiting for the money. (Annoyingly, he hadn’t told me ahead of time that he only accepted cash and I’d been planning to write a check.) Get the receipt, get my card back, the machine makes some noise as though it’s dispensing money, but nothing comes out of the machine!!!
Of course this doesn’t happen for a normal $40 withdrawal… no, it happened on a $600 one.
I went inside, furious, and they said the ATM was broken. ([red]Gee, thanks for posting a sign[/red].) I have to withdraw another $600 out of the account and they will sort it out next week. Now I was an actuarial student at the time… I didn’t always have an extra $600 floating around. But fortunately I did that day and they had the money back in my account the next business day or possibly two. (This went down on a Saturday.)
I thought it was bad enough that I had to wait one (or two?) business day(s)… 10 is absurd!!!
