So I learned recently that for particular items at this department store they will no longer be accepting credit card transactions as you will instead have to use cash and debit. While there was no explanation as to the reason for this my educated guess would be that for these items the company makes virtually no money off of. However, whenever people use a credit card the company is charged a fee for this. So they are basically losing money.

As the consumer I am semi inclined to shop at a different place as I personally would like to earn my points and cash back rewards. From a business standpoint I guess it can be tricky as in one end you are probably saving a ton of money this way. On top of that you have to factor in how many customers you are potentially losing to see if you are really walking away with more money at the end of the day.
For the most part I would think sacrificing the expense of enabling credit card purchases will ultimately bring in more people meaning more profits.

So today I got the rebate for the product I bought not too long ago. Indeed it was provided in the form of a pre-paid credit card. What was kind of surprising is the amount of literature that came with the mail. There were just piles of advertisements for other services and the process to activate the card had lengthy instructions as well.

This made we think how writing a simple cheque would have probably been more cost effective for the company. I’m almost thinking I should have just opted for the slower cheque route as there are a ton of fine prints saying how you can get charged a “$3.50 per month account maintenance fee” if the card is not use. I guess now I have to find something to spend the money on as I will be wasting my credit if I don’t.

So I have been kind of busy lately and was in the midst of paying the credit card bills. It is Friday today However, it is passed 5:00pm. Usually all of the banks are closed by now and every digital bill payment you make is delayed until Monday. Basically, if you had say a payment due this Sunday and say pay your bills today through online means you are semi out of luck.

Fortunately that isn’t the case here as all of my bills have an end of the month deadline. I guess in these cases it is better to have automatic deductions at times to ensure that your payments will be made on time. I always like to verify all of my money that is coming in and out though. As well, I usually try to maximize the amount of time my funds stay in the savings to earn more interest.

Is it worth it in the end? I guess from a dollar point of view in this one scenario it doesn’t really add up to much. But this habit makes me do the same in other aspects of financial management such as ensuring I understand and verify all of my expenses and savings where I am frequently on the ball with my money.

I guess like for a health nut while it may be easier and faster to just continually have someone deliver your meals to you knowing where your food comes from everyday and being proactive with it should generally translate to a healthier lifestyle overall.

I was talking to a person about car insurances today and it was kind of interesting as we talked about how even if you say never intended to drive a vehicle until way later it could be beneficial to get your license anyways. Reason being is that the insurance rates are heavily dependent on whether or not the person has been accident free for an X number of years.

So like in the case here with the insurance provider in this province getting your license and then simply leaving it dormant can make your reputation go higher in order to get the better rates. Kind of like a credit card in some ways I suppose where you would sign up for one and then just leave your balance at zero until you are ready to use it. In many ways it can make you look good in terms of being like a person who always pays off your balance and hence can get more credit while looking good from a credit a score point of view.

So you may have remembered a little over a month ago where I gave this hosting company a cancellation notice where it wasn’t until mid this month that the service was set to be renewed. Since I had no use for this particular vendor anymore, I decided to cancel it and gave them a lot of notice.

I also read all the horror stories and sure enough I received an automatic e-mail the other day saying that they have successfully billed my credit card. Funny thing is my cancellation support request ticket has been sitting unanswered since that time and I even replied to their billing e-mail about this.

Because of those horror stories I did indeed document everything too. I did take a peak at my statement online and the charge has not been posted as of yet and so I can’t initiate anything. The annoying thing about these is that you still have to pay the credit card bill and then wait for a possible month or so until you get reimbursed (Assuming everything is successful).

My credit card actually has an online form for it too which I haven’t really tried before. The last time I had to do something like this was almost 8 years ago using the traditional phone method. Will be an interesting saga unless that company fixes everything beforehand.