Getting Back to Blogging

I'm sorry I haven't been updating the blog! It's been very busy for me and like with everything else, the squeeky wheel gets the attention and I've had a lot of squeeky wheels lately. But I'm back and committed to giving you interesting things to read.

A quick note to update two earlier blog posts. Using a "virtual" credit card just saved me $179...I was interested in a product that said it would give me 3 months free when what they meant to say was the price was reduced by the equivalent of 3 months...pay for 9 get 12. Thank goodness I used my virtual credit card with a maximum payment amount of $1 so I could try it for 3 months and not have it automatically charged to my account in 3 months. The charge of $179 got declined and I was saved from instituting a dispute. Especially with automatic download products this is a sticky area...if the charge had gone through and I had immediate availability to the product would I have had an argument on my hands? The moral is, use those "virtual" credit card numbers - they are great!

Second update is about the credit card that sent me a letter saying if I wanted to continue to use it my interest rate would go to about 30% - upon calling them they said if I declined to accept the new conditions I could continue to use the card under the existing conditions until the end of January '09 and then the card would become invalid - but I could continue to pay-off the balance under the old rate until it was paid off. Since I just got a new card in July with an expiration date of 07/11 I thought I was fine and I certainly didn't want to be paying 30%!

Now the newest statement has a line on it saying "You've been sent new credit cards - be sure to sign them and activate them when you receive them." Hmmm, so because I declined the new terms they are issuing a new card...fair enough, I wasn't going to use that account anymore. But I'm very interested to see what the expiration date is on the new card...I'm thinking my 2-1/2 window of time to pay-off the balance is going to be reduced by giving me a new expiration date with the new card. Just a guess, but I'll know soon.

So read those new terms and conditions the credit cards are sending...I'll bet most used to get tossed into the trash, but in this new economy you need to understand what terms they are changing and how it affects you. If it's not understandable call the 800 # and have them explain it to you.

Those Pesky Recurring Payments

If you're like me you're looking at tightening your financial "belt" right now and cutting down on some unnecessary or overlooked expenses.

I love gathering information and quite often I'll do a trial offer that is free for X number of days before they begin to charge you. And then there are the monthly recurring fee items or subscriptions that I find I no longer need or want. But quite often it's difficult to find the information to cancel them, or worse yet, there seems to be no contact information to be found.

Recently I've figured out two ways of handling these that allow you to keep control and cancel them easily. One is to use a "virtual" credit card number. Most all credit cards offer them for online purchases. You tell them the vendor and the amount and how long you want the virtual number to be good for. So if you tell them 3 months if the vendor tries to put through a charge after 3 months it will be declined and they will get in touch with you. If you still want it you can give them another virtual number or cancel right then.

The other way is to use PayPal to pay for these items. Normally I'm not a fan of PayPal, but I just had a vendor who would only accept PayPal, so I used it for a recurring payment. I just discovered it is very easy to cancel a recurring transaction with them. So two things I tried out for a couple of months and now don't want to continue with were very easy to cancel.