Avoid sneaky fees and demand fair treatment

7. Devise a plan of attack for withdrawing cash overseas. If you’ve used ATM machines to withdraw cash while traveling overseas in recent years, you may have been stunned by the sheer volume and enormity of the fees that appeared on your bank statement. Credit-card currency-conversion fees also may have walloped you. To prevent cardiac arrest upon your return home, “Gotcha Capitalism” recommends that you do a little bit of homework before you head to a foreign country. Call the customer service numbers on the backs of your credit cards to find out just what they charge for currency-conversion fees, or visit this Bankrate.com site for details. Those fees can vary by a full 2 percent, so this process can help you decide which card to use when you’re traveling. Also, check with your bank to see whether it partners with any banks in the countries you plan to visit. If so, you could avoid hefty fees altogether by using your ATM or check card at those participating banks. Bank of America, for example, is part of a Global ATM Alliance with other banks in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, Mexico, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

8. Rebates aren’t always worth the hassle. Rebate offers can be enticing, but be careful: Plenty of businesses are counting on you to be forgetful, unmotivated or not detail-oriented enough when it comes to following up on such offers. According to an estimate in “Gotcha Capitalism,” about 40 percent of rebates never get redeemed. To make matters worse, the retail sector generally has been making it harder for consumers to cash in on rebates. Bearing all of this in mind, never make a purchase solely because of a rebate offer, and always check out the retailer and the offer before you buy. Do a quick online search of companies offering fabulous rebates on purchases of cell phones, electronic equipment – or anything else, for that matter. Your search may lead you to dozens, if not hundreds, of complaints about bogus rebate offers. Also recognize that most rebates must be mailed in after you’ve paid full price for the item, and the instructions associated with qualifying for the rebate tend to be cumbersome, time-consuming and confusing.

9. Follow this overriding principle: Just ask. It really is OK to ask for deals that aren’t widely promoted or that initially may not seem to apply to you. Here are just a few examples of “secret” low-cost plans Bob identified:

* Limited cable TV service for less than $20 a month;

* Very low-minute, low-cost cell-phone plans;

* Bank accounts that, believe it or not, have minimum deposit obligations;

* A whole slew of other deals that are made available to occasional users or frequent users who pipe up and ask for them. For instance, many businesses offer deals “for new customers only,” but you may be able to score those same deals even if you aren’t a new customer by requesting them in a persistent, yet polite, way.

Next week's 10 Tips topic Scoring big at garage sales Whether you’re a devotee of yard sales or the kind of person who simply gets dragged along to them, you can greatly improve the experiences you have at these events with a little bit of advance planning. Do you know how to bring home the gold from garage sales? If so, please   share your tips here.

10. Know where else you can turn. If you’re feeling run over by fees and you’re not getting any satisfaction after speaking up about the matter constructively with customer service representatives and their supervisors, then you have other options. You can send a firm letter of complaint to the offending business with carbon copies to your state’s attorney general’s office, the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission. (“Gotcha Capitalism” includes a variety of sample complaint letters.) And, if need be, you also can file formal complaints with all of these agencies, and you can complain to your legislator.

Sources:

• "Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day – and What You Can Do About It,” by Bob Sullivan (Ballantine Books, $14.95)
• The Red Tape Chronicles

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