Mark & Juanita wrote:
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 05:32:37 GMT, "George E. Cawthon"
wrote:


Mark & Juanita wrote:

... snip

Wanta bet? That's the way it is supposed to be, but if you
pay off all but the contested charge, they will charge
interest on the contested charge, and then the next month
when you don't pay it, they will charge a late fee and
interest, etc. You should get it back, but in the mean time
your credit rating goes down and the interest rate
increases. And you may not get it back and sure as hell the
credit rating and the interest rate won't change back. In
my case, one of the personnel flatly told me that I would
not get the interest and the late charges reversed.



So? If you have a disputed charge -- pay the full amount to the CC
company, the amount is still in dispute and should you prevail, you will
have a credit. If the adjudication crosses billing periods, you will not
have to worry about interest or late charges, and if your case is refused,
you won't have late charges or interest added to your account as you would
if you had not paid the amount.



Right that is what I did. The only problem is when you need
an item right away, you pay for the one in dispute and buy
another. In my case that meant making a check out twice for
about $2,000. I had the money so it wasn't a big problem
that I didn't get all of my original $2000 back for 3
months. For someone on tight finances it could be difficult.


Agreed. The only plus side is that this means of payment at least
provides a mechanism for getting one's money back. Paying by check or
other means to such a company and you've got nothing.





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Now we'll just use some glue to hold things in place until the brads dry

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Umm, No. We are not talking about a fly by night company.
If I had paid by check it would have been easy, I would have
simply canceled the check at a cost of $7.00. My case is a
bit unusual. I had to buy the item (meaning charged on my
card) before Jan 1 to deduct the cost on my income tax. I
tried to get Dell to simply bill it before Jan 1 but I
didn't really care about the delivery time, but they
wouldn't bill until shipped. I kept getting a later and
later shipping date. When I got a notice of delivery in the
middle of January, I canceled the Dell order and ordered
from Gateway because they agreed to bill my card immediately
and they did. Unfortunately, Dell delivered the stuff 3
days later (about December 21) after I had canceled it so I
refused delivery. Of course their biggest screw up was
sending me a message that delivery be very delayed when it
was already shipped.

If they had communications among their various departments,
all would have been well, but obviously the shipping,
billing, and sales departments didn't communicate. As it
was, the three boxes went back immediately, but the real
hangup was that at their shipping dock, they immediately
rerouted a $500 monitor to another customer and it was
delivered. All that info was fully available on the
shipping routing through the Internet, but Dell couldn't
find it and then they couldn't credit it correctly to me,
etc., etc. I think you call it incompetent cooperation.