Today, I’ll talk about a minor problem I encountered recently.  It caused some undue frustration, but the outcome was…well, let me just tell you what happened.

A few months ago, I got the opportunity to become a part of an amazing group of people by way of a forum.  As you may know, forums are a wonderful way to connect with like minded individuals from anywhere in the world.  Most forums are free to join and participate in, but the administrators of this forum decided to charge a very special, low introductory price because of the well known connections included.  The intro price? A whole $1.95 per month – for life.  Yep, that’s all…$1.95.

The introductory price was to last only for a short while, so I secured my $1.95 per month for life price immediately.  I had nothing to lose.  If I didn’t get any value from it, I could cancel at any time.  Pretty good investment if you ask me.

Well, about two weeks ago, I tried to log into the forum only to find that there was a bit of a problem.  My username and password were not working.  I tried several times, but no success.  Hmmm…

After the unsuccessful attempts, I had the normal questions.  “What in the world is going on?  I KNOW I paid MY bill!”  No, really I did.  It’s an automatic draft through PayPal.  This should be an easy fix, right?  Wrong!

After I logged into my PayPal account, I realized that there had been a problem I was unaware of.  I’m not a frequent PayPal user so I called customer service to get some answers.  This error had to be fixed immediately.  Not corrected, I could lose my introductory pricing and would have to pay the new price which is now $5.95.  Still not too steep, but that’s $4.00 more than what I was paying.

The representative checked my account and could not find any reason why there should have been a problem.  She apologized and stated that there would be another draft attempt within the next two days.

The next draft attempt – successful.  All access granted.  But wait!  There is another problem.  PayPal has deducted $1.95 from both sources of payment I have listed in my profile.  That means I have paid a total of $3.90 for the month. O.k., this has gotten a little out of hand.

The Lesson:  Automating payments is a wonderful practice for those of us who use the service, BUT be sure to verify your monthly statements with your payments.  Double checking avoids two issues:  not paying and over paying.

Note to self:  Call PayPal.  I want my $1.95! <Seriously>

Have a great day everyone!

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