Don’t ever think, for one half of a nanosecond, that you are getting top of the line customer service or are protected from a scam or phishing deal.You aren’t. You’re fair game 24/7.

For some of you that have read here regularly, you may remember my nightmare last year when I went north to the family reunion in August. I happened to belong/paid for a service to notify me if anything unfavorable showed up on my credit report at the time. I received an email alert that said I had a company filing a collection against me. It was bogus, I had paid the bill for an ad I ran in the LVRJ in December of 2005, and they in turn, turned me over to the collection agency – that never contacted me – and was going to file a collection against me. I got all of that straightened out – it took five or six phone calls, a few emails, a letter to the LVRJ because the creep at the collection agency never returned my calls when I left messages for him (and that’s what part of this post is about – how the consumer has to spend countless hours following up on something that never should have happened to begin with).

The good thing about receiving the email notice was that I went online to my checking account to search out the payment I’d made to the LVRJ. In doing that, I found out someone had stolen the funds from my checking and savings account through an ‘unauthorized transaction’. You can read all of it here. It had a good ending but it was all a pain in the ass – mine – and left me with no cash funds for the entire time of my road trip unless I used a credit card.

That little incident put me on edge with all of my accounts. I’ve checked them religously online.

My son and I have a business account together. About six months ago, his visa/debit card to that business account had charges of $600 plus, then charges reversed, then charges of $300 plus (they weren’t reversed) from a company in Chicago. They were unauthorized charges. More work for the consumer, fill out forms, make sure this card is cancelled, etc., etc., etc.

Around the same time, I decided it was time to start closing old accounts that I had open and had no balance on and was not going to use the account again.

I went through hell with a Capital One credit card. First there was a company that had monthly charges going to the card (no it wasn’t porn but I wish it was, at least I would have enjoyed it while it lasted). It took registered letters and more phone calls and aggravation before I could get the CC down to a -0- balance. Then I was told by Capital One reps that the -0- balance would have to be in effect for 30 days before they could close the account. After 30 days, I called them again, the account was still open. They informed me that they did that as a courtesy to their customers, just in case the customer wanted to use the card or changed their mind, they would keep it open another 30 days. ASSHOLES! I cut up the card in November of last year and had been trying to get it closed all this time. It finally did close. My recommendation to anyone that has a reoccuring charge coming on a card you want to close is just to call the CC company and tell them you lost the card. They will close your account and issue you a new card and the company with the reoccuring charge won’t have your account number any longer. I know I had to have spent at leastsix to sevenhours on the phone – with all of the phone calls I made – not to mention a trip to the PO and the registered letter fees, and hours of frustration over this one account.

Capital One, YOU SUCK!

I had a problemwith Dell in closing my account with them, and a huge argument over their interest rate. I purchased at least five computersfrom them, (family and friends), never was late on a payment and always prepaid my account, and paid it off early. There was no way in hell I could receive a reduced interest rate – it was set in stone. It took me a year to get that account closed. I think I finally managed it after emails, account messages, and phone calls. They must have thought they were doing me a huge favor by leaving it open.

About three months ago I got a phone call from my credit union security team. When I called back, there were unauthorized charges on my credit card coming out of Mexico. My credit union allowed the first three, they were small charges, but stopped the whole account after that. New card, more forms, and so far, so good.

I had an old GoodYear account and several others that I called on and they were closed immediately. YIPPEE!

I was left with three credit cards. One is a PayPal visa card that I had seriously kicked around the thought of closing it for some time now. It is carried through Providian. BTW, I used to have another Providian account and it took me almost a year of following up to make sure that account closed. The PayPal card had been inactive for the last 14 months. I haven’t put anything on it in almost two years, paid it off in 2/06. I checked it today to find an ‘outstanding authorization’ for $95 coming in. Yippee…NOT! Here I go again. I called them, the charge is from some ‘muscleonline’ or something like that and there are two more coming in from India for $105 or so each. Close that sucker. And no, I’m not going to have them set up another account for me. I have to wait for the charges to hit before I can call them back and protest and they will send me forms disputing the charges. That CC has been in my safe for the last year so how do the villiansget these things?

But it’s not only credit cards and bank accounts, it’s merchants and items you purchase and contracts with companies that make you crazy too.

I have a ‘family’ planwith Cingular on my cell service. I changed that plan to a new rate that was offered and figured to be saving a few bucks on that alone. Since I have 47 cousins and 15 friends that need a phone, Iadded a new family plan (please don’t ask me to get one for you too), and between the two plans, knew about what mymonthly bill would be. I got a real heart stopper when I checked it on the internet and it was a whopping $700 plus. WTF? It took me another hour on the phone to go through the finedetails that weren’t available online. One phone was set up by itself instead of on the plan, I was charged too much on each activation fee, blah, blah, blah. That would bring my bill down to around $600. I wasn’t even going for it. I argued for about 15 more minutes and explained that I knew what my monthly charges would be and it wasn’t close to $600. And that it was amazing how much time and energy I, as the consumer, had to spend to get things right that their reps couldn’t do in an office where I spent an hour and a half setting up the accounts each time. At the end of the conversation, I was given a $200 credit because I’m such a damn good Cingular customer, and my bill was livable with the new activations. I got several, “I’m sorry’s,” out of it but what good does that do me?

I believe the consumer should be allowed to bill the company for wasting our time.

That’s just a preview of what’s going on with most of us on a daily basis. If you aren’t checking your statements and your balances, you’re CRAZY or you have more money than you know what to do with. If the latter is the case, please send it to me, I can always put it to better use than the villians that try to hijack your accounts and the companies that make plenty or they wouldn’t be where they are.