There are some businesses, and I am not pointing a finger at a specific one, that I truly believe try to find something “extra” to charge for each time you make a purchase.  There are some who want to sell you additional things like warranties and the like, but here I am taking about things you don’t want and didn’t approve.  They just add it on and hope you won’t notice and just pay it.  Sometimes they make a mistake with these charges, but it’s so blatantly wrong — I tend to believe it’s not a mistake.  Not enough people check over their receipts and invoices.  Not enough people refuse to pay the extra charges.  Even for some who do, it’s just impossible to fix and they get stuck with them anyway.

Just the other day, Christmas Eve, I got hit with a surprise $5.00 charge on my receipt, at a local sporting goods store. It was for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, but I didn’t approve it, or even know about it till I found it on the receipt and then the cashier had the nerve to ask my husband if he did it.  First,  there was no way he could have done that, and second we both knew it likely was some kind of a contest to see who could rack up the most dollars for St. Jude’s that day — Christmas Eve — long lines, busy customers, rushing, waiting in line… hurrying on – just put it on their bill and hope they won’t come back to the store to have it fixed.  It was after all a great time to hit people up for $5.00 to a charity, but because I didn’t approve it first, not a legitimate one.   By the way, on that same receipt, I found a second problem before I left the store that netted me an additional $7.35 off.  This one involved filling a sales table with a sign and price that didn’t apply to the items on the table.  I basically demanded they take the sign down immediately or honor the price.  They honored the price for me, but were having no problem charging everyone else $7.35 more for those items than what the sign indicated.  But enough of that, let’s get into our list.

Common Carriers – You know these companies as UPS, Federal Express, DHL, the United States Post Office and others that carry your goods from place to place simply because you can’t.  I think they provide a valuable service to all of us, but I still hate the extra fee’s they tack on.   Why?  Many times I find out about the additional costs after I have shipped my goods, billed my customer, or otherwise finished with the transaction.  Their software which should (in my opinion) figure out your entire cost in one fell swoop – doesn’t do it all the time correctly.   The carriers get around that by making you “agree” that their invoice is only an estimate of the costs and actual billed costs could be different.  Over the years there have been class action suits against these types of carriers for blatant errors in charging clients.  I have personally been billed for “oversized” packages that we measured,  entered with their actual measurements in their software, only to find they revised my measurements to add a few inches here and there – and lots of extra shipping dollars.  That part is bad enough, but when they “fight” you when you call them on their error, that is when it really gets annoying.

Read more “Being Aware of Extra Fees – Part Two”