“And YOU thought you paid a lot for gas.”
Not everyone checks their credit card statements closely, but it is likely that Juan Zamora will be looking a little closer in the future. His last fill up of his 1994 Chevy Camaro cost him around $81 billion (that was with a “b”).
It was an error (the company ended up using the gas stations I.D. number and not the charge amount) but it makes you wonder what else they are charging incorrectly. How much time do you spend going over the bills you receive? Or do you just pay what they tell you that you owe?
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1. Write down all of your spending in a spiral notebook and then compare the charges on your statement with what you’ve written down. Be sure to dispute any that do not line up with what you spent no matter how minute. If you didn’t make the charge then you shouldn’t pay.
2. Review all of the bills that you receive – particularly phone bills. Sometimes companies add on service fees that you do not need or want and you will not know if you do not look over the bills when they come to you.
3. Review your bills as they come in. Waiting until the last minute could mean you wave your rights to dispute some charges.
4. Utilize the internet to keep an eye on your bills. Most credit card companies now offer internet access so you can see what you are charging as the month goes along and you don’t have to wait until the end of the billing cycle to see what shows up on your bill.
It’s not every day that you get a bill for $81 billion but it could be every day that you are paying more than you actually owe. Take the time to review your bills and statements and you could end up saving yourself a nice bundle along the way.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:13 am
It’s a great deal easier to do this in Quicken or similar financial software. Just open a file (an “account”) titled “Charges” and enter each charge as a debit. Ignore the bottom line…it will soon add up to a startling figure, but it will tell you nothing except how much you’re put on cards over the time you have used cards.
When a statement comes in, all you have to do is run through the Quicken file and click to clear each item that appears on the statement. This makes it easy to check the statement’s accuracy and also allows you to see if anything you charged did not go through or if you forgot to enter something you charged. It also allows you to run a Quicken category report to include all your charges, giving you a detailed view of where your money has been going over a period of time.
March 10th, 2009 at 8:01 am
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