Odds are that you’ve been overcharged at some point in your life. Mistakes happen. The big question is: Is there any acceptable level of overcharging? [More]
FedEx Employee Says Company Knew It Was Overcharging Customers, Didn’t Care
By December 12, 2012
As part of a class action lawsuit alleging that FedEx has been overcharging its business and government customers for years, an unsealed email from an employee claims that not only did the company know it was doing so, it even overcharged itself for sending packages to its own headquarters. Go on, shake your head in disbelief. [More]
Report: Safeway Overcharging Even After Court Order
By November 2, 2012
Supermarket chain Safeway and its Vons stores have been sued twice in the last decade by the state of California for overcharging customers. Yet, in spite of a court order that penalizes the stores each time it’s caught overcharging, a new report says that customers say it’s still going on. [More]
The Dunkin' Donuts Buttered Bagel Battle
By April 28, 2011
Sometimes, the ripoffs that are the most frustrating are the smallest ones: small transactions that are repeated thousands of times and eventually add up to some real money. Brian has one such issue with his local Dunkin’ Donuts outlets: they keep charging him too much for a bagel with butter. Seems petty, doesn’t it? They charge him for a bagel with spread, then charge separately for the butter, at a difference of $1 for every bagel. If he buys a bagel five days a week, fifty weeks a year, that’s $250 over the course of a year. He could be halfway to buying an iPad, just on butter overcharges. [More]
Facebook To Student: That'll Be $300 For Nothing
By December 8, 2010
Max says he used Facebook Ads to direct traffic to his computer repair service, and is baffled that the Zuckerberg Death Star is charging him nearly $300 despite receiving only eight weekly page views during the ad campaign — down from his usual 10 weekly hits. A $50 credit helped defray the costs, but he’s still stuck with a $245.17 bill. [More]
Watch Out For Drugstore Price Traps
By April 7, 2010
I was at a Rite-Aid a couple of weeks back and went to pick up some cheap dish detergent, and the bottles that I remembered being less than $1.50 were all in the $3-4 range. I left and found sanely-priced soap at another store a few blocks away. Our reader Stan just wrote in with a similar example, where he caught his local CVS charging him three times as much as a nearby competitor. [More]
Investigation Reveals Widespread Fraud In Seafood Packaging
By March 30, 2010
It’s a common, legal practice to protect seafood with a layer of ice before packaging it up for retail sale. It’s also apparently a common practice to add that ice into the total weight of the seafood, and in some cases to add more ice than necessary just to bump up the total weight, which isn’t legal and which defrauds the consumer. The National Conference on Weights and Measures recently investigated seafood packaging in 17 states and pulled more than 21,000 packages of seafood from store shelves, noting that in one particularly bad case ice made up 40% of the total listed weight. [More]
Two-Thirds Of Insurers Share Faulty Database That Lets Them Overcharge Patients
By June 26, 2009
Earlier this week, a Congressional investigation revealed that several insurance companies rely on a database from Ingenix that deliberately underestimates the cost of medical services, reports the Associated Press. The result is that “American consumers have paid billions of dollars for health care services that their insurance companies should have paid.”
Blockbuster Busted For Overcharging Customers, Must Pay $300k
By May 19, 2009
What do you do when the foundation to your business is crumbling and bankrupcty lurks like the Grim Reaper just outside your drop box? If you’re Blockbuster, apparently you charge customers more at the register than what’s displayed on the product, at least in California.
Massachusetts CVS Stores Regularly Overcharge Customers
By May 7, 2009
The number of overcharging violations – defined as charging more at the register than the price in an advertisement, on a shelf sign, or on the item itself – soared to 711, from 425.
Is Kohl's Systemically Overcharging Customers?
By May 3, 2009
Don’t walk out of Kohl’s without first double-checking your receipt. The store apparently has a penchant for overcharging customers, according to the Sacramento County Department of Weights and Measures, which fined the chain $2,000 for repeatedly failing surprise inspections. CBS sent an enterprising reporter to see how long it would take for them to uncover a pricing discrepancy of their own. Almost immediately, they found a woman who was charged $64.99 for a pair of shoes marked $59.99.
Sears Fails Third-Grade Math
By May 2, 2009
Quick, what’s 2 x 15? Did you get 40? No? Then you’re apparently overqualified to run Sears’ website.
Why Is Nokia Charging Customers More Than The Invoice Amount?
By March 31, 2009
Nokia has already had a few problems rolling out its new touchscreen 5800 XpressMusic phone, including earpieces that go bad in humid weather and firmmware that wouldn’t work on certain big-city 3G networks on the US model, but now they’re screwing around with something serious: customers’ money.
Bank Of America Charges You To Cash Its Own Checks If You're Not A Customer
By March 27, 2009
Bank of America doesn’t think cashing checks drawn on its own accounts is a service that should be free to no-name people who come in off the streets—they want $6 for that privilege, one reader recently discovered.
Greyhound Accidentally Charges $1,000 For A $70 Bus Ticket
By March 14, 2009
Greyhound tickets from Raleigh to Asheville cost $67.50, unless you’re Meg Stivison. Then they cost over $1,000. Greyhound repeatedly charged Stivison’s debit card while insisting that she didn’t know the address on her bank statement. Meg ended up driving down to the bus terminal to buy a ticket, but that was just the start of her nightmarish journey…
PayPal Charges $81,400,836,908 For $26 Tank Of Gas
By February 28, 2009
Juan Zamora fed his 1994 Chevy Camaro $26 worth of gas, a transaction for which PayPal charged his debit card $81,400,836,908. Unsurprisingly, PayPal saw nothing wrong with the charge and demanded that Juan prove that he didn’t actually buy $81.4 billion worth of gas.
Is This Gas Company Lying About Reading Meters? Nope!
By February 16, 2009
Update: As several readers have pointed out, there’s a simpler explanation for the confusion: both the OP and I were misreading the meter. The first digit should be rounded “down” to 9, so the meter in the photo actually reads 997.4 MCF—which is more in line with the previous bill. Thanks to everyone who caught this and wrote in or commented! We hope this helps you out, Michael.
Blockbuster Double Dips In PayPal Account; Naturally, PayPal Does Nothing
By September 10, 2008
Blockbuster debited Anthony’s PayPal account two days in a row for the same monthly plan. PayPal won’t help—they say it’s between Blockbuster and Anthony, offering further proof that PayPal is a great service only as long as nothing goes wrong.
