Money matters
It has been a hair-raising morning. A couple of hours ago I decided to switch to BlueHost.com for my web hosting company, since they give you 10gb storage and 250gb/mo bandwidth for only $7/month. (I'm going to move to Wordpress as well, which I'll talk about in a moment.) So I put in my debit card information and click Submit, expecting it to charge me $7 for the first month. (Mind you that there's nothing on the order page to lead me to think anything else. The only dollar amount on the page is the $6.95.)
Imagine my surprise when the next page says it has just charged $166.80 to my account. It was easy enough to figure out what had happened -- they'd charged me for the full two years in one fell swoop -- but frustrating because they didn't say they were going to do that. ~argh~ Then my eyes widened as I realized I only had $50 left in my bank account. ~gulp~
As I went to my bank website, yup, it had just overdrafted my account by $116. I've accidentally overdrafted a couple times before and it isn't any fun, and overdrafting by such a large amount (comparatively speaking, of course -- remember I'm a student :)) wasn't any better. At that moment I wished I'd used my credit card instead, which would at least give me some time to pay it off.
Then I realized rent was due yesterday. (This is the first time I've forgotten, just for the record. :) Usually I pay five or six days in advance.) I paid it with my credit card, but as soon as I'd done so I remembered that I only had around $340 worth of credit left -- which meant that the $275 or so for rent combined with the $116 overdraft advance was going to max out my card and still have some $45 left over. Bad. Very bad. It was at this point that the nauseating feeling in my stomach started to turn into emptiness. It was also at this point that I vowed to myself that I am going to take charge of my financial matters and not let things like this happen any more, at least if I can help it.
And then, after a very sincere prayer, the thought came into my head to call the hosting company and see if they could "undo" it. So I called their support line and explained the situation, and the guy said he'd cancel my account and re-credit my card. Hurray! Even better, he said BlueHost.com would pay the overdraft fees if there were any. Very nice. They'll definitely have my business as soon as I get $166.80 into my account. :)
Imagine my surprise when the next page says it has just charged $166.80 to my account. It was easy enough to figure out what had happened -- they'd charged me for the full two years in one fell swoop -- but frustrating because they didn't say they were going to do that. ~argh~ Then my eyes widened as I realized I only had $50 left in my bank account. ~gulp~
As I went to my bank website, yup, it had just overdrafted my account by $116. I've accidentally overdrafted a couple times before and it isn't any fun, and overdrafting by such a large amount (comparatively speaking, of course -- remember I'm a student :)) wasn't any better. At that moment I wished I'd used my credit card instead, which would at least give me some time to pay it off.
Then I realized rent was due yesterday. (This is the first time I've forgotten, just for the record. :) Usually I pay five or six days in advance.) I paid it with my credit card, but as soon as I'd done so I remembered that I only had around $340 worth of credit left -- which meant that the $275 or so for rent combined with the $116 overdraft advance was going to max out my card and still have some $45 left over. Bad. Very bad. It was at this point that the nauseating feeling in my stomach started to turn into emptiness. It was also at this point that I vowed to myself that I am going to take charge of my financial matters and not let things like this happen any more, at least if I can help it.
And then, after a very sincere prayer, the thought came into my head to call the hosting company and see if they could "undo" it. So I called their support line and explained the situation, and the guy said he'd cancel my account and re-credit my card. Hurray! Even better, he said BlueHost.com would pay the overdraft fees if there were any. Very nice. They'll definitely have my business as soon as I get $166.80 into my account. :)
posted by Ben at 10:25 AM
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