January 11, 2011
I’m kicking myself up the road and back right now. I knew that my Rapid Rewards Award flight was going to expire in January but forgot to check on the exact date back in December so that I could do something about it before the expiration.
Logging in, I find that dratted thing’s expired on the second and it’ll cost me $50 to reissue. And reissued awards are “subject to capacity controls, meaning seats for travel on reissued Awards will be limited and not available on all flights.”
*&@*$&(*$!!
Quite. Annoyed.
The kicker here is that there was never any need to even log into my account to check on that. I keep a spreadsheet of all my airline awards specifically to track issue and expiration dates against this very scenario.
*sigh* That’s really aggravating to my penny-pinching soul.
November 20, 2010
There’s an idea PiC and I have been floating, kicking around, actually, for the past several weeks.
A friend is going traipsing about across continents for several months and has been prodding us to jump in for a bit of that trip sometime in the spring. We’d previously half-promised to join a pair of PiC’s friends in Greece “sometime in spring” but that couple has already decided on a week on Greece and another in Italy and at a time that may not work so well for us.
Leaving aside the question of whether I can save enough vacation time, there’s still the actual cost to get there and back, and fill my ever-starving belly! A very rough estimate of an acceptable budget: $2000-3000.
It’s a pretty crazy thought.
But.
So Delicious.
I hit FlyerTalk and Fatwallet to confirm my suspicions and sure enough, there had been a fantastic promotion for the British Airways Signature Visa months ago – 50,000 bonus miles after a first purchase and a $2000 spend in three months, but the current promotion on offer was pretty anemic at only half that so I held off. It’s nothing like the one from last year offering twice that, for a total of 100K miles, though. *dramatic sigh*
Lo, when I tried to book my travel for work, Chase/BA ambushed me with the premium offer, only if I were to apply right then and there and pay for my travel with that very same card.
Pacing back and forth, assailing PiC with demands for his assessments of our usual spending that goes on credit cards for the next three months, I found myself, after two hours of obsessing, applying for the card. What I did not notice, shame on me, was that a waiver of the annual fee wasn’t part of the promotion. I’d taken that for granted as a normal business tactic for all the new cards. And they get you right up front, too! The charge hit my card two days after I got it in the mail.
As a bit of emotional solace, though it’s hardly a real offset against $75(!), I just found out that this card no longer charges a foreign transaction fee. So there’s that.
The 50,000 bonus miles will pay for one transatlantic flight, so that’s one of us taken care of. Perhaps it’s worth $75 for PiC to pick up his own card after I’ve completed my $2000 spend so we can combine costs on his card? I don’t want to be spending above need just for the sake of getting bonus miles, of course, that’s silly and wasteful. But I am planning to pay things like car registration earlier to get it into the three month cycle for this card. We can do that for a number of things like Costco gift cards (which are another story entirely).
I don’t know if, when or how this trip will happen yet. There are still a lot of issues (hi, family problems) to be settled between now and then so it might be completely unrealistic to try and go away for such a big trip. But I’ll just keep squirreling money and miles away. Just in case.
October 27, 2009
There are some days when it feels like the big bad news is torrential, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Usually you can’t. But there’s almost always something you can try to make it better: use your words.
vs. State of California
I called EDD five times a day since reading that letter, caught in the mill of bureaucracy. I kicked myself, over and over, for scheduling my trip for the exact day that they wanted a phone interview. “But,” I thought, “nothing I can do but keep on calling.” Until I really listened to the voice prompts, and realized one day that they change slightly. They mentioned Saturday service during which most services would not be offered but that representatives would be available to help log online requests. You’d better believe I was all over that website again, searching for that elusive online option. I found a series of drop down menus that would suffice, and I wrote a thorough explanation for why a phone interview wasn’t necessary. They provided a list of some 20-odd questions I had to be prepared to answer: I answered all of them in that form. At the end of it, I clicked “send” with a prayer.
Result: Win.
vs. county of San Diego
Immediately after receiving those fines, I fired off letters disputing the Toll Evasion Accusations. In detail, I pointed out all the problems with paying a toll for which the amount was unstated. I stopped short of making any nasty comments and offered to pay the original toll fee.
Result: 80% Win. They want me to pay the original toll, plus $10 (vs. the original $50 fee) to cover their collection and processing. To justify this, they’re calling the judgment “we’re right, but we’ll reduce the fee this one time for you. Just pay our costs.” Uh huh. Jerks.
$39 cost to me, with a $120 discount.
vs. online class instructor
On a short quiz of only 10 questions, with a forced completion time, the percentage point loss when two of the questions are poorly worded is substantial. I ran the possible equations, closed my eyes and picked a set of answers to submit – and lost the 50/50 gamble. I sent the instructor an email letting him know the questions were ambiguous, and that I had run the numbers correctly supposing one of two interpretations. I didn’t ask for my points back since he had to first acknowledge that my interpretations were valid.
Result: Win. The HTML had incorrectly rendered his text, and the question was posted incorrectly. Points were returned to me.
Have you argued or negotiated your way to victory lately? Will you, now? Do share! I’ve got a few more pots on the stove bubbling away, I’ll fill you in on those when the incubation period is over.
March 1, 2009
Not only is WAMU still charging the stupid $25 annual fee for 2009, they’re also charging a $75 distribution fee, costing my already depleted IRA fund a total of $100 in fees. Unbelievable. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to retain half the value of my original contributions. Then again, I only had several months to contribute at that employer after I turned 21, and before I quit, so it wasn’t a huge amount of money to begin with.
I would have balked, and did mentally, but sting though it might, this is the smarter long-term choice. Paying a hundred dollars now to roll the remaining money into my current employer’s plan under Vanguard is the equivalent of 4 years’ worth of annual fees. That money better be sitting in the retirement account for much longer than 4 more years! That’s my breakeven point.
This should have been done as soon as I established my retirement plan with the current employer, but I didn’t realize that it could be incorporated into my 403(b) without tax implications. In retrospect, it’s already cost me more than a hundred dollars in fees (a $40 distribution fee was charged when I first rolled it over). This is for keeps because I’m signed up for Vanguard’s emailing service which eliminates annual fees on my accounts and I have enough money in Vanguard to just keep it there once I leave this employer.
Just another stupid tax from back when I didn’t know to look out for fees charged for moving my money around. Come to think of it, I was shocked by the $40 distribution fee back in 2004, and could have sworn that I asked about it, but cannot for the life of me remember what the answer was. The cost of naivete and inexperience.
January 27, 2009
For now, anyway. The Driver’s Edge card is one of my most rarely used credit cards, but it came out recently for the window/lock repairs and covered a good $160 of the $180 mechanic bill.
Unfortunately for me, the due date was on January 1st and I completely flubbed the payment. Don’t ask how, I can only blame the stupidity that is my complete confidence that I wouldn’t forget to look at my planner in the middle of a 2 week holiday break. Yep, totally thought that one through.
Of course, I incurred a cute little $15 fee and a finance charge on top of that (83 cents) for the pleasure of using my rebates (and being stupid, yes). For about a week I considered just paying it and keeping my mouth shut because one, it was totally deserved, and two, it’s not a $29 fee.
Luckily, I came to my senses and gave them a call. I didn’t lie, I just asked if they would waive the fee. In under two minutes, the CSR cheerfully waived both the fee and the finance charges and sent me on my way.
It’s awfully nice that they’re still willing to waive fees so easily, considering the straits the company is in, and I thoroughly appreciate it. After all, every penny counts in this economy!
Besides, after paying a huge stupid tax via the towing fees and associated pain, I’d like a little credit for having paid some dues. 😛
November 6, 2008
I’m finally victorious after months and half a dozen hour-long calls.
No joke, I’ve probably spent more time on the phone with Verizon and their DSL branch of the billing, customer service, technical support, and cancellation departments in the last several months than I’ve spent talking to my own relatives.
Sheesh.
Long story short: We had problems with our Verizon DSL service several months ago, and after fighting with technical support (“We have a problem.” “No, you don’t, it’s fine.” “Yes, we do have a problem, we have no internet.” “No, you’re fine.” “NO, it’s not fine!” etc.) my family decided to jump ship by cancelling the service, and switch to another one without telling me.
Since I had originally reduced the price of our service ($15/month) just by asking, and had been told there was no contract and no Early Termination Fee, I was just peeved that they switched to a more expensive service without checking with me first.
Then I was royally ticked when I found out that Verizon was charging me an ETF.
Fast forward several months, and several painfully long, fruitless calls later, I had my final bill with the ETF ($79!) in hand, and got through to the cancellation department. After another 45 minutes of very patiently explaining the situation, a supervisor finally finally finally waived the fee.
It’s a good thing I’ve had all this time to simmer down before talking to the person who could help me out because I was mightily grumpy on all the previous calls. It might have been the holding for 25-30 minutes at a time, or being transferred no less than 4 times per call only to find that what I’d been told by the previous CSR was completely untrue, or you know, any number of things. Whatever the case, it became a crusade not to pay those liars their $79 when I’d been explicitly assured there wouldn’t be any such charge. And I’ve finally completed my quest: ETF has been waived.
October 28, 2008
About two weeks ago, I saved an acquaintance from getting a ticket. The metered spots only allow 4 hours of parking before a certain time in the evening, and she’d run out of meter time an hour before Free Time. As parking enforcement rolled up, glancing over at her car, I popped out and dropped some money in her meter.
When I drove into work last week, I used the meters because I normally commute by train and don’t have a long-term permit. Absentmindedly noted that I needed to move my car at 4:50 after parking …. then, I completely forgot until 5:50 pm. I was in agonies, sure I’d been ticketed.
Whether it be because I’d earned a little non-tickety-karma by helping someone else out or because there was construction on the street, there was no ticket on my windshield. Hallelujah for avoiding stupid-absentminded fees!