Keep your eye on those statements

[Ghoulish Delight]

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.