Have You Been Checking Your Credit Card Receipts?
Credit Card Receipts Are Not Garbage
What do you do with your credit card receipts? Do you put them in a file or a shoebox? Do you throw them away? Where are your credit card receipts when your monthly statements come in? If you’re not checking your receipts against your statement, you may be throwing away your money.
Diligence Pays Off
Why should you check your credit card receipts against your monthly credit card statements? Because sometimes things just don’t add up. You know that dinner you had earlier in the month at your favorite restaurant. With the tip, the total came to $64.85.
If your credit card statement came and the total for your dinner was $69.85, would you even notice the difference? The server could have added an additional five dollars to their tip and you would never know it. The only way to know for sure you’re being charged what you should be is if you check each and every receipt against your credit card statement.
How To Do It
Every time you make a credit card purchase, put the receipt in an envelope when you get home. Then, when your monthly statement comes in, check your receipts against everything on your statement. If something doesn’t add up or if you were charged for a purchase you don’t have a receipt for, you know something is awry and you can look into it.
Contacting The Merchant
If you do notice a discrepancy on your credit card statement, take your statement and your original receipt to the merchant who made the error. If they’re not willing to correct it right there on the spot, file a dispute with your credit card company and send them a copy of the original receipt. If the merchant isn’t willing to refund you the amount they overcharged, the credit card company will just take it from them.
It may take you a few extra minutes each month to verify each of your credit card purchases, but you work hard for your money. Shouldn’t you make sure you’re not spending more of it than you have to?
Comments
I can attess to the importance of checking your statements. Sometimes people have different cards for different purposes, that way checking back to the values are easier than having everything clumped into one card.
Posted by: Bad Credit | September 1, 2006 4:25 AM