Stop getting overcharged!
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 10:26AM 
One thing you learn when you're a personal finance writer: Behind every purchase lies the potential to get ripped off. That's why I decided to tackle this topic for my September Redbook column.
Some might call me a pessimist, but I say I'm a realist. Case in point: A couple weeks ago, New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs revealed that two-thirds of the supermarkets they inspected over the last year were overcharging customers at the register. And that's not the only example. Down in Georgia, Countrywide customers are just now getting reimbursed after paying marked-up fees associated with their home loans from 2005 to 2008. Last but not least, a lawsuit filed in May alleges that AT&T fleeced iPhone users for data by up to 300 percent. And that’s just the overcharge news from this summer!
Look under the rug of any company you do business with, and you're likely to find lots of money that could have been yours—if you'd only done due diligence by comparison shopping, pre-researching a purchase, or reading carefully through each line of your receipt.
Check out the current issue of Redbook to discover the three most common overcharge offenders. You'll be richer for it!
Have you been overcharged lately?
Reader Comments (2)
cant wait to read it
I can't do anything in such situations. I guess it is because of jobs online in my past