Recently I was talking to a gentleman who says that he refuses to pay regular prices for various services especially with companies who have all these special fees in the final bill. Literally, for services such as the telephone he will keep asking for the person’s supervisor and then their supervisor until someone gives him a deal.

He was then telling me about an incident where an elderly lady literally was so persistent in a similar matter where she was literally transferred to the CEO of the company who had no problem at all in giving her a discount. On top of that, the CEO then told her that the people she talked to would be addressed as well as the issue should have never gone that far.

In general, this usually is true where people who are persistent enough seem to be able to get all the deals and discounts that they want. I personally don’t like tactics like these though as it is kind of shady in some ways I feel. In my opinion, there is a difference between getting a good discount through things such as competitor pricing and inappropriately harassing people for one until the give in.

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While reading through all of the fine prints in the credit card offer that I received, an interesting line that caught my attention was how I would be charged a fee for all transactions that are conducted in a foreign currency. I’ve personally had no knowledge of this type of fee before as I have made many purchases in locations such as the US. So, I decided to do a little research on the topic and was surprised to see that virtually every major credit card company has this fee and that there was a lawsuit in the past about it.

Apparently what was going on was that most of them would have a fee of say one percent of the total purchase cost. Instead of displaying this fee separately to clearly inform the card user of it, the fee is actually incorporated into the final total. Like many others, whenever I see the converted total on my bill I just automatically assume that it only consists of what the current currency conversion rate is. I guess I must of been a bit too anxious when I first got my credit card, which was right when I was at a legal age to get one, because I didn’t remember reading about such a fee and would of definitely thought twice before making a foreign purchase with it. I bet that would of saved me some money if I was fully aware of it before.

This just goes to show you that hidden fees/charges are everywhere as companies have to make money somewhere and that making sure you understand your service contracts can go a long way in helping you to save money.

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