[ryandrake]

This has been an enlightening thread. I can see now why companies use every dark pattern in the book to get you to subscribe, because apparently, for many people, once a bill is on "autopay" then as long as it's a low enough charge, the company probably doesn't even have to provide any service for it. Just milk that forgetful customer forever. And multiply that customer by... at least everyone in this thread!

So wild, I guess I'm actually an outlier. I actually keep paper receipts and compare with what I was charged when it hits my balance. You'd be surprised how often restaurants, grocery stores, hotels and so on are off by a few cents or even a dollar or so. You'd think with everything computerized these errors wouldn't happen. I also never use autopay for bills.

[themagician]

So what if they are off by a few cents or dollars? Do you actually spend time to contest this? It seems like there is some minimum threshold just for the hassle… it's got to be at least $15-$20 by now. I you really going to go back and forth scanning paper receiptes for $5?

To some extent I just I figure law of averages should even it all out. You see the reverse wtih ecommerce on Amazon et al. If you buy something and get the wrong thing, or it's partially broken, or just late, or even if you are just unhappy—you can click the refund button and like 33% of a time you just get your money back as part of a returnless refund and get to keep the item.

[ryandrake]

> So what if they are off by a few cents or dollars? Do you actually spend time to contest this?

I have. It's not a hassle. Especially if I'm already there for some other reason. I clip coupons for the same reason. A $5 discount is a $5 discount.

[zamadatix]

A $5 coupon is also worth ~100x more than a few cents so it's worth ~100x the hassle. For a sense of scale imagine if the topic of grocery coupons came up and someone started mentioning they still make sure to take the time to enter their $500 off member code at checkout because a $500 discount is $500 discount - well duh, it'd be free groceries at that point!

[Yodel0914]

I go through every transaction on our credit card every fortnight. It's less about keeping on top of sneaky companies and more about the discipline of sticking to a budget.

[SoftTalker]

I look at every credit card transaction every time I pay the bill, so once a month.

I look at my bank transactions slightly less regularly, but at least every other month or so. I don't use a debit card so really the only things that directly hit my bank account are the credit card payments, a couple of auto-pay utilities, mortgage, and a few other things. It's not hard to spot something out of the ordinary.

[genevra]

I assume some, like myself, don't want to spend time on that

I do glance at my statements every few months though

[johnnyanmac]

Yeah. Put it like this: if you are paid $50/hr (which is a very low end for this audience on HN), and you see some $2 coupon not applied, you'd need to be able to resolve it in less than 3 minutes for it to make sense to dispute (in a purely holistic sense. ofc time is invaluable for many).

If this is on some normal $200 grocery receipt you probably won't be able to find the mistake in 3 minutes, let alone go back and take the time to flag a busy cashier, find a manager, and resolve the error. At best, it'd be a lesson learned to check at scan time extra hard.