Not many people balance their credit card statements. (Not sure who balances their checkbook today, besides my mom – she says it is therapeutic?!??!) I have always given my credit card statements a quick glance, looking for charges I didn’t make. But recently I met someone who religiously balances his charge statements, in a course of one year, he found approximately $500 in overcharges, not in his favor. (Oh, of course there were some charges that were in his favor – he didn’t bother to correct these.)
So I started watching my credit card charges more carefully. Here are the 3 mistakes I caught in 3 months:
- Cashier miss-typed the amount. For some small businesses, their credit card machine may not be integrated with their POS (point of sale) system. So if the charge is for $20.14 the cashier has to retype that amount into the credit machine. Quick fingers charged $20.41. Not that big of a difference, 27 cents, but wrong. When you see a retailer staple 2 receipts together, assume they had to hand typed that amount into the credit machine. One receipt is itemized receipt of items purchased and the other is the credit charge authorization.
- Charged the wrong card. Recently with a friend at lunch, we each paid for our own meal with credit. The waitress gave us receipts to sign with our cards tucked into the leather folio. Although she returned the right credit cards to the right person – we noticed that credit card number on each of the receipts was ‘wrong’. She charged the wrong cards to the wrong bill – but handed the right cards back to us. It is easy to remember the last 4 digits of your credit card – this always printed on the receipt – make sure they match.
- Erroneous charges. On a recent vacation in Ft. Lauderdale we had terrible service for lunch (and an expensive – $56 for 3 sandwiches and 3 drinks). The waitress was rude. (Or in a bad mode. Note to this waitress – don’t be a hater because we were on vacation and you were at work. That’s life.) We had to ask for silverware after our meal was set on the table. One of the meals was wrong. And she gave us a loud ‘sigh’ when we asked for glasses of water, and a shoulder shrug when we asked for a water refill. We decided as a table not to leave any tip. But when I returned home and balanced by credit statement – there was an up-charge on credit card statement. The little **** added her own tip – $14 to be exact. Talk about a difference of opinion, we thought she was worth nothing, she though she was worth 25%. I called the restaurant and they fixed it.
If you value your money, I would suggest you manage your credit statements diligently.
Most credit companies allow up to 60 days to dispute a charge. So be sure to watch your charges every month. But your first line of action is to call the merchant directly to resolve the inaccurate charges, if they are not resolved then get the credit card company involved.
I found explanations on how a merchant goes about correcting any credit charge errors. But I couldn’t find what consequences the retailer has for fraud type charges, as in my example #3, except we won’t be eating there anymore. Just think if this waitress over charges every person $1 on their credit card and he/she swipes 100 credit cards – well that is a lot more than chump change.
A couple of years ago American Express introduced ReceiptMatch. I though at the time what a great benefit for using AmEx. Specially if you use your credit card often and for a lot of small expenses at small businesses that may be hand entering totals.
American Express has ReceiptMatch matches your receipts to your Business Card transactions that have posted to your American Express online statement. It will continue to match your receipt to a transaction for up to 8 days until the transaction has posted to your online statement. Until the receipt is matched, your receipt image will appear in the unmatched section within ReceiptMatch.
PART II – will describe the difference between credit processing types – swipe, chip, Apple wallet, Paypal, etc. Stay tuned.