Battling with credit card companies over charges on your cards

[motion]

Getting pretty tired of this. I use my cards A LOT all over the world. After each trip, I get to come home and go through my online statements and prepare to do battle over all the extra crap that these merchants are billing me for, the most popular being rental car companies adding lots of extra $$$ for surcharges, taxes, VAT, insurance that I declined, etc. Its almost a full time job, and I heavily dislike the negativity associated with the whole process. At a certain point, they do wear me down, so I just ignore all the extra $30 here, $40 there stuff. But, I'll bet it adds up to a few hundred a month that I just don't go after. My favorite is hotels that are pre-paid on Expedia, or similar, yet upon checkout, they claim the room has not been paid for. I deal with those continually.

I do believe that I'm going to "go dark" with my credit cards after my year of traveling is over in 2015. I can only imagine that its going to get worse in the future.

/rant

[GH85Carrera]

A few years ago I spent the night at some hotel in Maryvile, TN. The room was nice and the stay OK. When I got back home I saw they had charged me for two rooms. I called and asked how I could stay in two rooms at once. It took a phone call to my CC company to really get the hotel's attention. It took a while bu they finally decided some random person was put on my bill because he did not pay. I don't even care how that is possible and sure as heck ain't my problem.

[biosurfer1]

I haven't had to deal with too many charge backs but I will say when I have, Chase is pretty good about immediately refunding my money.

Sears is a good example. I bought some stuff online and went to pick it up, only to be told the order was at a different store (37 miles away) but they have everything in the order and could fill it but they would have to cancel the original order. No big deal, I thought, but of course there were two charges for the exact same amount and NO ONE at Sears could pull their heads out of their asses long enough to figure out what went wrong. Finally one of the reps just told me to dispute it with my credit card company....which I did.

[wdfifteen]

Exchanging hate mail with credit card companies got to be kind of a hobby for me. I still have the receipts for some "trophy" chargebacks and refunds. I've been in some epic battles. The best one was a chargeback that I demanded and Chase denied. I built up an inch thick file of letters on it and Chase got to the point of threatening to charge me with harassment. Six months later the state AG told them to give me my money back or they would be charged with abetting fraud. I once got an $11,900 charge reversed (it took six months) and won a 9 month battle with Chase over late fees. I haven't had the opportunity to do it much anymore. The CC companies been behaving.

[Rick Lee]

I've never had an issue with this. Once in a while they hit me with a finance charge, even though I pay in full and on time every month. They always credit it back, but it seems like they're just testing to see if I'll bother to call about it. Never had an issue with a hotel or rental surcharge unless it was an upgrade I decided on when I checked in.

[legion]

I must be the only person who has never done a charge back. I had one legitimate case once, and my CC company told me to call the company on the charge. I called them, they agreed to reverse the charge, and that was it.

[Porchdog]

When I prepay for a hotel or whatever (I do use Expedia) I print the receipt and bring it along.

Are you getting receipts that don't show these charges then they tack them on after you are gone?

If these charges are on you final bill and you sign for them, I can't see why you are disputing them later.

[Tobra]

I had a deal where I went down to Lodi to get my wife's homeless stepbrother off the street, get him cleaned up. We got a hotel room so he could shower and shave, were there a matter of a few hours. Got the bill and it was for three days. I disputed it, CC took the charge off, then put it back on because the hotel said it was legit. I called them, got nowhere with the hotel and the a-hole manager, and the CC was not helping at all. They claimed that we came back and told them we lost the key. On about the third or fourth call to the hotel, I told the assistant manager I was going to sue them for whatever the max is for small claims court. I would have to take time off work, they would be paying for that, plus the bogus charges. She said, "That is crazy, you are going to give up a few thousand dollars in income to go after a few hundred dollars." "No, I am going to give up a few days in the office, and your hotel is going to pay for it." Followed up with a certified letter that delineated what was going to happen, and included the old, "This is really not an issue that we need to go to court over, and they will not look kindly on you wasting their time. You have 10 days to reverse the charges." They caved when confronted with the fact that it was going to cost them 10 times what they had tried to steal from me.

[Evans, Marv]

I learned a lesson by buying a vacuum system at a trade show and using my credit card for the down payment, which was two hundred something dollars. When I got my statement, I had been charged the full amount of $2,200+. I called the guy & confronted him about it. Ended up avoiding anymore hassle by filling out the explanation form telling my credit union to reverse the charge. That was the easiest route. Never again will I buy something from a trade show.

[Dave Kost]

I had good luck with AMEX when I traveled for my job. Only AMEX, if they didn't take AMEX I didn't buy it. (Easy way to do expense reports.) I charged everything to the AMEX card.

Always BS charges for hotels, car rentals etc. I just had to call AMEX and they would look into it, I think AMEX had a 6 weeks grace period while the did there diligence, and they would reverse the charges.

Just keep good records and receipts.

Just my experience….

[M.D. Holloway]

Interesting - I have yet to see a fraudulent charge from a rental car charge or hotel. I use mostly Hertz or Avis for cars and HI, Marriot, Hilton and sometimes Hyatt for hotels. I use American Airlines to book all. The rates a bit better and I get points.