About 5 years my wife and I bought a very nice bed from a local furniture store. Now this store has out sourced their financing to a Caisses Popular in Quebec, and we had to open an account with them because we wanted to use the “don’t pay until St. Swithens day” or something of the like.
I got annoyed after I figured out that because this is a Caisses I can’t make electronic payments on this account, from my regular bank. OK, I have to mail a cheque (so it cost me 50 cents to pay off the debt, which annoyed me but fine and dandy). Now I mis-read the balance owing and managed to overpay this account by $5.00.
For the past 5 years every month I have received a balance statement from the Caisses (via Canada Post) stating that I have this $5.00 credit.
Yes, they have spent over $20 in postage costs to tell me that I have a positive credit with their system. I guess I should try to get my $5 back, because if I had this money in my bank account I might have earned 10 cents in interest over the past 5 years, but I can’t be bothered (apathy and I are good friends).
I have had this happen once previously with a large electronics store, where I had over paid by $3.00 and what they did was the next month they sent me back a cheque set the account balance to Zero and do not send me balance statements, unless I use my credit again.
Does your company do dumb things like this? Better still, do YOU do dumb stuff like this? Why? What’s your excuse?
Nextel sends me a bill for $.07 cents for over a year now
yep, I had similar experiences. I too wonder why they do this. It must some kind of regulation.
Banks like to behave strangely. If I deposit a 200$ personal check at my bank’s ATM it will be available immediatly. However If I do the same thing at the counter, they will put a one week hold on the check because it’s a personal check. WTF? I guess enormous companies like banks cant be bothered with coherent policies.