Friday, February 06, 2009

Tip of the day

If you get a bill for $32.80 and you pay it over the net using your credit card make sure the amount you pay is only $32.80 and not $3280.00. This is what I did when paying a phone bill just the other day. I didn't realise this until I checked my bank balance and almost died from the shock. I thought someone, somehow had hacked into my account and used my credit card to buy themselves something rather large.

It wasn't until I looked at all recent transactions that I realised my mistake. I made a frantic call to the phone company to try to correct the mistake. They told me they could reverse the transaction but it would take 8 to 10 days. This is unfortunate because now we have no cash and I have to go away on Sunday. I've had to ask my mother for a loan to tide us over until the transaction is indeed reversed. This totally sucks and I hope the phone company lives up to their promise and doesn't decide that I just have to keep that money in credit. Once I paid $100 more on my electricity account and asked for a refund but they told me they couldn't do that and it would just have to be used as credit on my next bill. If they decide to do that I will cry myself to sleep for the rest of my life.

5 comments:

Churlita said...

That's horrible. I would never have enough in my account to cover that. It sounds like something I would do on a very frantic day, though.

Claire said...

Actually we don't have that much money either. That was the bank's money and now we're going to have to pay them interest on that money. Things could always be worse...

Meegan @ The Harvey Circus said...

Oh I've done that before too, except via BPay...

I called the bank straight away and the guy was very friendly, just laughed and said it happens all the time! Anyway, he was able to reverse it (or whatever they have to do from their end) and we got the money back a couple of days later.

I hope they get that money back to you soon...

Churlita said...

You aren't in the area where the fires are, are you? I used to be a wild land fire fighter. I know how scary they can be.

Claire said...

No I'm not in the fire zone. It's at the opposite end of Australia. I have just returned from the very northern end of Australia where it rains and rains until it floods and the humidity is stifling.