Saturday, September 10, 2005

Saturday Nite Rantings

Well, I warned you that I have a lot of things on my mind, so here I am again; ready? With so many things to bitch about these days it's hard to focus in on just one thing. Let's see the mistreatment of the elderly, no not tonite, that would turn into the novel I'm afraid of writing. Hmmm how about the mistreatment of animals, no that's no good either, not tonite I have a headache. I know unsavory credit card bullshit. Check this out, if this hasn't happened to you yet, it just might so be careful. I used to be a member of Columbia House DVD Club. Note I said "used to be" This was not necessarily their fault, but once something ticks me off with a company I am done with them. (Don't even get me started with BMG) Anyway, I went on the internet and ordered three DVD's with a special no s/h deal and a 20% discount, everything was great. Promo codes took; credit card payment went through fine. Two days after my purchase hit, mind you I'm very diligent about checking all my bank and credit cards statements online everyday, low and behold there was a second charge from good ole' Columbia House! Only this one was for about $20.00 more than my original. I immediately called them, the girl quite helpful I might add, stated she saw the error immediately. Somehow it "rang out" my discounted order correctly, and then rang it out again without any discounts. I said, well cancel it and reverse the charges, if you can see the error and you know I don't want two of each DVD's. She quietly replied that she couldn't do that. She tried to pull that old trick where the company says it is already been shipped. The problem with that? If a company ships something to you and you didn't order it, you can keep it for free, nothing they can do about it. I calmly reminded her of that law, even though she agreed; she still couldn't reverse the charges. She suggested I wait until the second duplicate order came and of course refuse it, and as soon as it gets back to the company, my credit card would be credited. I gruffly told her that was totally unacceptable and we mutually ended the call. This is not the end of my story...you didn't think I would take that bullshit lying down, did you? I called my bank, now here's the part that is totally bogus and something really should be done about it, the law states that any charge mistakenly or otherwise put on any credit card, the originating company has 90 days to put it back. So of course I asked, I thought that when there was a dispute like this one (Columbia House readily admitted the error to the bank) that the money would be put back in by the bank and demanded from them...nope. They freeze the amount "disputed" and have to send paperwork to the alleged company the whole process can take from 6 weeks to no longer than the 90 days. Now (and I clarified this with the bank manager) by freezing the money, they don't take it back from the other company, what freezing means to them is simply a notice on my account marking it as disputed so Columbia House would still have "possession" of the money until resolved. When it became resolved the money would automatically be reversed from their account back into yours. So the bank advised me to simply refuse the package and get the credit because I would get my money back faster. That is not right, but it is the way it is. So attention all you fraud people or companies that are a bit shady...Make bogus charges on everyone's credit card, admit to the mistake, apologize, and keep the money drawing interest for 90 whole days, then give it back. Sounds stupid on 100 bucks, but do that on multiple accounts to the tune of 1 Million Dollars, and you could easily get 7% interest, that's a cool $70,000 dollars of interest a year, and your not even working...think about. Legally it is possible...My rant is done for today. Nighty Nite