Sometimes you just have to ask

Yesterday I had some charges reversed on my Verizon bill. $175 worth of charges. All I had to do was ask. I just called customer service, and was very pleasant to the woman who answered my call. I asked her to please upgrade my plan from 700 minutes to 1400 minutes and make it retroactive to last month to cancel the $175 worth of overage minutes Melinda and I racked up. And she did it. No yelling, no asking for a supervisor. I just asked nicely and she helped me. And this isn't the first time.

Last month I got a bill from AT&T because I canceled one month before the end of my two year contract. They billed me the entire cancellation amount for both phones: $350. I called their customer service and asked politely to have those charges removed. At first the lady said she could not do that since the contract was not up. I asked again. She removed them.

Last month I bounced a check. I'm fairly certain this was the first time in my life. Somehow I had the erroneous idea in my head that my savings account and checking account were linked for overdrafts. Not sure where I got that idea from, but it was false. So my $500 check to the tree removal service bounced while $10K sat in my money market account being useless. The bank bounced the check to my tree guy and charged me $30. I called customer service. I politely asked them to remove the $30 charge, which they did without complaint.

Earlier this year we were having a strange problem with our Chase Credit Card bills. We pay our entire balance every month, but the date that we pay it on was out of synch with their billing cycle or some such. I still don't understand it obviously. Anyway, three months in a row we were assessed charges of about $30. Melinda called customer service and after a long, but pleasant conversation all charges were credited back to us for a total of around $100. They also advised us to pay on the first of each month, which we now do.

Also, earlier this year I called the lender holding my mortgage note (Wells Fargo) and asked about a refinance. They were able to lower my rate with a no-cost refinance (not rolled into the loan, paid by the spread). My payment went down $200/month. I paid no closing costs. My loan principle remained constant. I just asked them to lower my rate and they did (glossing over the paperwork hassle part of course).

Grand total that's about $3055 of my money saved, just by asking nicely. So, don't just sit there reading this blog, go ask someone for some money, it works.