Keep your eye on those statements
 

While dealing with our webhost informing me of a spike in our resource usage on their servers, the thought has crossed, and continues to cross, my mind that it might be a bit of a scam to force us into upgraded our service. I have little recourse to dispute their claims and I'm sure their user agreement gives them the right to make whatever call they want. I voiced this to € who wondered if risking alienating their customer base was sound business. But seeing as the next level of service up is > 10x the cost, if even 1 in 5 customers just blindly say, "Oh really? Okay then, upgrade me," and they lose the other 4, they've more than doubled their intake.

Meanwhile, € mentioned that he's dealing with a rebilling for domain registration from a site we are no longer registered with. And an erronious charge from a hotel.

And I started to wonder, as the economy slows down, might we see an increase of these "clerical errors" and other less-than-ethical ways of slipping things past lazy or unobservant consumers? It certainly made me want to be extra vigilant when it comes to watching my statements as they come in.

Humm, it could be. I'll check into it for you.

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Ooh, good heads up there! Sadly it would not surprise me at all.

I view the occasional overpayment as the cost of living a simple life of never opening my mail.

I hate opening mail. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one. Our mailbox gets overflowing and then I have to bring it all in and sort it. But it's all just junk and bills. I don't want either.

On the hosting - we've had pretty decent luck with e business express.

One simmalar type of buisness scam to to mail an invoice for copy paper or toner cartriges to the secretary of a midsize comany. She then gives it to the billing department who thinks it's worthy because they got it from someone in the company. I heard about years worth of these bills getting paid.

There was also an article in the paper a few years back of an elderly lady who's grandaughter was helping her with her finances. She noticed a phone rental charge on her phone bill. When she asked her grandma about it she said "Oh, we haven't had that phone since the 1970's!". The phone company wouldn't take it off until they got the phone back. After it broke in the news, they had a change of heart.

So yes, watch those billing statements!

Toner people are the worst scam artists in the business world.