I’ll give two examples, one business and one personal.
Last week I went to a coffee shop and paid. The machine beeped and acted like it went through, but the cashier said it did not. So I paid again. Lo and behold I was double charged on my credit card. It’s $8. I was trying to decide if I should call them or message them on facebook, or just mention it next time I go in, but then it dawned on me that I don’t *have* to do anything. $8 is not a big deal and it was an honest mistake. I don’t think it’s worth the $8 to bother with it.
Another time I went on a guy’s camping trip. It was a cheap campground split like five-ways, and one of the guys was just visibly stressed about how much he owed me and was counting his cash and made an off hand remark about how it was all he had until next Thursday or something. Like he was trying to recall if it was like $19 or $16 each. I think he gave me like $7 and I didn’t pursue the rest. Probably shouldn’t have even taken the $7 in hindsight, but maybe it was good for his dignity to save face and be able to say he’d give me the rest later.
I mean I don’t want to be a pushover, but I also don’t want to waste time and energy being a cheap stickler counting every bean.
26 comments
Call them. If they say no, I’d charge it back.
Depends on circumstances. Fortunate to be in a spot where from a personal perspective I would be happy to cover basically anything less than $100 for friends or acquaintances occasionally. But if a credit card company or insurance company owes me $5 I’m going after them on principle haha.
Imagine the coffee shop did that to 4-5 customers a day. Each day for 5-6 days a week. That’s £25- £35 a day that’s £180-£210 a week. Now do you complain or do you call them out.
The guy camping with you is a friend on hard times & as long as he doesn’t do this every trip I’d let it slide. When he’s back on his feet he’ll remember who was there for him when tines were hard.
If it’s less than $5 from a business I usually won’t spend more than a couple minutes trying to get it back. If it involves a friend or a family member I wouldn’t even spend a second on anything less than $20.
I would have been annoyed with the dude on the camping trip. Like bro either don’t go, or ask me beforehand. I could not care less about the 10 bucks, but putting me on the spot like that is shitty. He pushed you over, it was not a mistake and he guilt tripped you after you did everyone a favor by taking care of the bill. So unless he had a very good reason or he had done me a solid in the past this type of bs would make me not want to invite this person to anything again. Ofc I would give him time to make it right, but we all know these people never do. It would be the principle.
The coffee was just a mistake. Maybe I would have cleared it up on the spot if I was in no rush, should be easy to see the mistake in my online banking. If not I probably would just go on with my day.
If I can t afford to pick up the whole tab for something I ask for someone else to do it or simply to be paid up front. It is always tricky to get money back, and if people can’t or do not want to pay up it is in general not worth it. For the same reason I don’t borrow people money I can’t afford to lose, if they pay great if not, well we are not really friends anymore.
I go after anything I’m owed by businesses to the very last cent for principle.
Friends and family get a 30€ allowance.
The $8 double charge thing…it’s not a lot of money, but it’s more of a principle – how dare they double charge me! They never give me double the coffee for what I paid!! I might let it go or I might not. Depending on how I really feel about it at that time.
Ok, if someone can’t pay for camping because he’s so broke, he can pay whatever he can, at least a couple bucks…just so he doesn’t become a free loader. Friends and good company are more valuable than $19.
If it was a mom and pop shop then I’d forget it. If it was Starbucks or something then I’d ask for a refund.
Family/friends…wouldn’t care unless I felt like I was being taken advantage of.
The amount of money I will walk away from because it isn’t worth the hassle is pretty high. I’ve ignored an $1600 debt to a friend to salvage a meaningful friendship and I’ve walked away from $700 because I never wanted to see the person again and I saw that money as the price I paid to find out the type of person they were.
Now businesses, on the other hand – I will go to war over $50.
I typically won’t chase anything under $100 from a friend or family, though, my usual MO with family and friends is to lend/pay for thing, and assume it’s a gift, and not a loan/tit for tat situation.
If a business does something shady and causes me heartburn, it’d probably have to be over $25 for me to really care, but I’d go through some amount of trouble for $50+.
For friends and family, probably a few hundred. Maybe not even that depending on the situation. With a business under $20 I’m not going to waste too much time.
If it’s a business, I’d call them. And when they don’t refund me, I’ll file a charge back with my CC.
For friends and family, I usually just tell them that I’ll cover them and they can cover me later. its fine if they don’t remember, and in this case I’ll never loan them any money going forward. This is my limuts test.
With friends I don’t worry about it, and it’s never been an issue even if it takes a while, but if a friend had gone rogue on a decent sum and then asked to borrow again I’d probably say hey you never paid me back before.. though I think that would also probably prevent them from asking for more. So while it’s never even happened, I think that system kind of solves itself. You get one.
As for businesses, if it’s more than a couple bucks it’s worth calling attention to it, and generally is resolved quickly and easily.
Forget about the personal. Go after the 8 bucks next time your at the establishment. Show them the charge and just ask for a free coffee or something. Don’t make a big deal.
if it’s a store, i will always ask for a refund because companies make too much money as it is ie: getting charged twice for the same grocery item – i will wait until the manager voids the transaction. i received a $1.43 refund from spectrum, i will deposit the check eventually.
if it’s a person it depends on our relationship and amount. maybe $40?
For friends/family anything over $5000 usually.
Apparently $2,000. My ex wife claimed our son as a dependent, costing me a $2,000 tax credit. I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to file manually or deal with her. Coming very close to using the state resources to go after her for child support (I paid $250k over the past 10 years, but now that I have custody she contributes $0 the them).
Depends on the resistance to getting the money back.
If a simple “Uh oh, I looks like the machine accidentally double charged me for this $15 meal. Could you reverse that, please?” It usually gets a response of “oh, I’m sorry. Let me take care of that.”
But if I have a contractor who scammed me out of $2500 for a shower tile repair job, then I’m going to call him every day for 15 months straight, file in small claims court, call his bank to get the money back, and everything else I can think of, until he comes back to finish the job.
Depends. I’ve let $1000 go and collected $5.
$1000 was a company that paid me incredibly well (so much that the $1000 didn’t matter). $5.00 was an asshole coworker
For something like the coffee shop, I wouldn’t even notice that I got double charged. I don’t bother to look at credit card bills unless something is clearly amiss… That would imply a charge of several hundred dollars, I imagine.
For the camping slot…. I currently have reservations for about half a dozen camp sites over the Labor Day weekend. I’ve paid in advance and have invited a number of friends to join me. I have no intention of taking their money (at least one has offered). It is “my treat” per se. And really, camp sites are so damned cheap its not worth my time keeping track of who paid and who didn’t.
I don’t let anyone steal from me not matter how small the amount, its a principle I simply will not ever compromise on, it could be 1 penny or 1 hundred dollars they are one in the same. If I pay for something I don’t receive, that’s theft. That being said, I never loan money I’m not willing to lose nor do I ever have the expectation of getting it back. If they want to bail on repaying after they agreed to, twice shame on me.
I don’t loan money. I give money away. If friends or family pay me back, cool. If they don’t, I just forget about it. But I typically don’t loan my money to anyone but the US Government. It’s either in the market somewhere, in land somewhere, or in the government somewhere.
Friends are one thing. But I filed a chargeback when Subway charged my credit card for $2 more than I approved. It’s the principle of the thing; don’t appreciate them looking at me like I’m a sucker.
80%. If it costs me 80% of the debt or more, I let it go. Same for anything less than $20.
For friends: let it go and take some time to re evaluate the relationship. The amount doesn’t really matter, but trust matters a lot to me. Accidents are fine, forgetting is fine. Intentionally stealing even $5 is weird and breaks trust. I would tell them, “Just ask for money if you need it?”
For everyone else, I know what my time is worth. I calculate cost and likelihood, and usually let it go. My life and my time is really great, why waste it unless the money affects my life in a significant, negative way?
I don’t lend money personally, so I’ll never be in a position where I’m personally owed money.
Business transactions run on business principles, so any transactional errors will be treated as errors. This can often be corrected without confrontation. There’s usually no malice involved and both parties are acting in good faith, so this usually isn’t difficult.