Over the weekend my wife and I rented a wheelchair-accessible van so we could take her mother on a day trip to the big city. My wife did a lot of shopping around (online) and found a place that had a weekend special. Basically, the total rental cost for Friday afternoon to Monday morning was about $130 less than the normal rate for the same length of time. When we returned the van on Monday morning, my wife paid the bill with her credit card and we were ready to go … until I looked at the bill. The rental charge (before tax and mileage charges) should have been $250, but I saw $380. I said, “whoa” and pointed it out to my wife. She went right back to the company agent and asked what happened to the special weekend rate. Oh, it was a mistake. They had run the charge through at the normal rate. Whoops! They apologized and fixed it immediately.
There are two lessons here:
- Always look at the bill. If you see something that doesn’t look right or that you don’t understand, then …
- Ask why the bill is higher than you expected and get an explanation.
In many discussions over the years, people have told me that they’ve lost money by not doing these two simple things. It’s happened to me too. Sometimes we’re too busy. Sometimes we’re inattentive. (Sometimes the sales clerk is a pretty young thing that distracts us.) Sometimes we don’t want to cause a scene. Sometimes we’re shy. — Enough excuses! We need to pay more attention to our money!
