Caveat Emptor

Life's lessons learned...We're hotel people. We love staying in hotels. Now that we have a family member in the Marriott business, we stay in some lovely places for the same price as the "budget" hotels. We're pretty hotel savvy...you know, give them your card number to hold the room, and they charge you when you actually stay.

So, we book a hotel out of the country for our anniversary next month. For some unknown reason, we use the bank card instead of the credit card, and we use an internet discount hotel site. Imagine our surprise when this site charges our card immediately and we're socked with $255 in overdraft fees. It's not a problem that we were charged right away...we had the money in savings to cover it. The surprise is that we didn't know it would happen. (This is the lesson for all of you who didn't know these internet sites work this way!)

I call our banker and ask what he can do. We're one of those families that lives within our means, doesn't overspend or rely on credit, etc. We live pretty simply. Suddenly our three nights in a hotel for our anniversary is costing us well over $500. We've been good customers of the bank, haven't overdrawn the account in years. No dice...our banker won't reverse *any* of the charges.

I'm in tears at this point...how in the world can I get an anniversary gift (our tenth, by the way) for my husband when we can't even afford the getaway now? Frustrated with the bank, frustrated with the internet company...

I did call the hotel company...they were sympathetic, but it really wasn't their fault...we will be getting $60 credit to use again. But what about all those bank charges? It was really ridiculous that my personal banker wouldn't even consider it. It's now after 5:00 on a Friday, and I didn't want to spend my weekend stressing about this. Then, I discovered our bank's headquarters are on the West Coast. Yippee!!!! So...long story short, a very nice lady at the headquarters (whom I've never met, unlike my banker) reverses over half of the charges. Don't know what Dan's getting for our anniversary now, but he'll at least get something :)

Lessons learned: 1. read the fine print; 2. use your credit card and not your bankcard...the transaction can be reversed, but the bank fees aren't so easy.