With the growth of e-commerce we buy lots of things on the Internet. This includes stuff we don’t really need. Yes, we have all done it – ordered things on the spur of the moment so as not to miss that incredible offer we just couldn’t refuse. In many cases it was “free” or almost free. “Try it free for 30 days…money back guaranteed!”. Sound familiar?
The problem is that we don’t keep track of the 30 days and/or it was one of those merchants that makes it impossible to cancel the order. I remember one where they sent me a free sample of some lotion or other and in order to cancel the permanent monthly order I had to send them back the empty bottle and give them the tracking number. I guess I should have read the small print. Do we all do that?
If you visit any merchant website, it is full of buttons that entice you to order but I challenge anyone to find the button called “Cancel”. It is often impossible to even find the right email address or telephone number to stop the money being withdrawn from your account each and every month. Even if you get a telephone number and call, they only have one agent answering the phone so you have to sit on hold forever. So here is the tip of the day to resolve these issues.
Pull up your credit card/bank statements and go through the charges line-by-line. See how many of these charges you can find. They might only be for $3 here and $5 dollars there, but they add up, especially when you multiply the total amount by 12 months. You might want to try getting hold of someone to cancel each charge or you can make it easy on yourself and call the credit/debit card customer service number (on the back of the card). You then tell them you have mislaid your card and would like them to cancel it completely and issue you a new number. This phone call will not take more than 15-20 minutes.
Your new card will arrive normally within a week and then you just sit back and wait for the emails to arrive. You could call the suppliers of the services you really need and give them the new card number and they will gladly take your call and help you. But when you start receiving those emails from those other suppliers about the payments that didn’t go through, you can simply reply and cancel their service. This will immediately eliminate those hidden costs we all accumulate. It is also a good security measure against someone that might have stolen the previous card number.
