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Home > Lunch Challange and a TON phone calls!

Lunch Challange and a TON phone calls!

February 22nd, 2008 at 03:39 am

Today's start to the lunch challange went well! I did stop by the grocery store tonight to pick up salad fixings. For tomorrow, I will have:
Breakfast: Oatmeal, fruit cocktail
Lunch: A BIG, yummy salad and all bran crackers
Snack: Carrots and pudding.

Then tonight, I made a TON of phone calls, all financial related.

-First, my car insurance to confirm the final payment was received to pay through July. It was. There was also a 'convenience fee nicely tacked on for $4.00, which the rep kindly waved. ($4.00 saved!)

-Second, I called a company that I had signed up for a trial with as part of a Cash Crate offer. The shipping & handling was supposed to be for 99 cents. But my card was charged for $1.89. The rep said that they only billed for the 99 cents, but since the credit card is showing $1.88, they would credit back 99 cents to the charge. I pointed out that then the amount I paid them was only 89 cents and she said thats fine, she could only credit back in the amount of the 99 cents. (so 10 cents saved!)

-Third, a RIDICULOUS phone call with Comcast. They had made a billing error last month and charged me for phone & internet, but not cable (although they gave me the $10.00credit for the special I was on). I had pointed out the error last month, but the rep told me it was a system glitch and they would fix it in the next month's statement. Well, they did find the error & decided to charge me $50.00 for it. In reality, I should have owed about $40.00.

So I called to challange the charge and talked to what had to the be stupidist person alive. It took him 40, yes 40, minutes to understand that I was being double billed this month because I was not billed last month. All I wanted was for the bill to be corrected by $10.00 and the guy just kept reading the bill to me over & over. Then he refused to get me a supervisor. So I asked him to just transfer me to one of his peers. I figured a different set of eyes on the problem would help. He also refused that. I didn't want to hang up, because the hold times were ridiculous. If I could get an in house transfer, it would be a lot quicker. But he still refused.

Just when I was going to hang up on him, he put me on hold (without my permission) and then he transferred me to the New Jersey Sales department, which couldn't help me, even though they tried. I got a 2nd rep on the phone who helped me in like 5 minutes and gave me an $18.96 credit, which was more than I was even asking for! I got to talk to a supervisor after that and the guy told me that he was going to pull the first rep off the floor right now to have a discussion about what he did. Whether the supervisor did that or not, I don't know, but I seriously hope he did. (So, $18.96 saved!)

-And as I apparently am a glutton for punishment, I decided to start calling credit cards that I am no longer using (for over a year) and wanted to close. I closed
- Gap
- The Limited
- Chase (I actually transferred the line to another Chase card prior to closing it)
- Sony Visa.

All closed me within 5 minutes, with very little hassle! I received a lot of 0% offers, but refused them all. I don't have any credit card debt to transfer anyway. (No monetary savings, but I did get a big splash of peace of mind!)

I still have two store cards & 4 major credit cards open. Although I am not going to be using credit cards, I am keeping those few open for the time being.

I plan on keeping it a low key weekend this week. I have been fighting a migrane, we're in for a big snowstorm and truth be told, I'm just stressed about some familiy stuff.

I have some library movies & books and I've taken to pulling stuff from my dvd collection that I haven't seen in awhile.

Also, I put up an add for a roommate on Craigslist. Last time that I did it, I mostly got scams and scary people. So hopefully, I'll do better this time around.

2 Responses to “Lunch Challange and a TON phone calls!”

  1. fern Says:
    1203706842

    OK, there are a couple of things that i want to say.

    On your remaining credit cards, PLEASE don't close the accounts, even if you don't use them. One of the things FICO looks at when determining your credit score is the ratio of your current credit card debt vs. available line of credit. When you close out credit cards, that lowers your debt to credit ratio, which in turn will lower your credit score. Your credit score is important to keep as high as possible becus when you need to borrow money for a mortgage, car, home improvement, school or anything else, you'll get a better interest rate with a higher credit score.

    Unless you feel you're an out of control spender, don't close out credit card accounts. The credit bureaus also like to see a long credit history, so the older the cards are, the better. If you have to close out any cards, close out the newest ones and keep the oldest ones. You can always put the cards in a alocked drawer, if you have to. And when you keep these cards, use them at least once or twice a year. It can be small purchases, but the idea is to keep them from going "inactive" and thus not included in your FICO score calculation.

    Actually, i made a similar mistake with my cards years ago. Being a conservative spender, i thought i was being smart by calling both Amex and Visa and asking them to put a "freeze" on automatic credit increases, you know, how they automatically increase your credit limit every year or so? By doing that, i was actually penalizing myself becus i was lowering the total amount of available credit to about $5,000, so that meant the % of my total credit card debt at any given time would result in a higher ratio than if i'd let the cards' credit limits rise. I've removed those credit freezes now.

    On the Comcast call, that was terrible customer service from that guy. I try to write down the name of the person when they first identify themselves so if there's an issue, i can at least have a running record of who said what.

  2. Dido Says:
    1203725176

    Good luck finding a roommate! That does help so much on expenses, but it can be hard to find the right one. The right one, though, can end up being a lifelong friend.

    Hope you avoid the migraine!

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