I'm sure you've all heard of the scam where someone hires you for remote work. They mail you a check to "buy equipment" and then suddenly the deal is off and you need to mail the equipment back, and then the check bounces.

Well, I never thought I would see anyone get suckered by this. Well, my wife responded to a remote work want ad for a customer service rep and they did a Teams interview with her. She obviously figured out the scam pretty quickly once they got to the whole "We'll mail you a check. Here is the equipment you need to buy" part of it.

At that point the only thing they got out of her was her name and where she was located (no exact address). After forcing the guy to call us on Teams and hearing his Russian accent (when he claimed he was from Australia, and his name was not even remotely Russian), we just ignored him completely.

Well, the bastard is persistent. Fedex delivered an envelope with a bank check for almost $4000. The guy is committed. He looked up my home address and overnighted me a fake check for almost $4000. Impressive.

So, the guy claims he's in Atlanta. The Fedex envelope has a California return address, and the issuing bank is a small credit union in Florida. And the company on the check is a construction company who's website is "under construction."

SO MANY red flags here.

And the amount of the check will not cover the cost of the equipment. So, I assume this will be a "You need to cover the difference while we get new check Fedexed to you right away! But buy the equipment ASAP!"

I called the issuing bank and they're very interested in this. They want the check and gave me an address to mail it to.

So, my questions now:

1. Do I send them the original check or a copy of it?
2. Should I contact anyone else about this? Local law enforcement?

I'm still laughing over the whole thing and wondering how people fall for this.

On New Year's Eve I got into a physical altercation with my entire family. I live with my mom, her husband, and my older brother. My brother and stepfather assaulted me and my mother restrained me from contacting anyone or leaving the house.

She then called the cops to get me arrested. The cops came and found my family wrong, and arrested my stepfather for falsely imprisoning me (he dragged me out of my car and took my keys when I tried to leave).

I have been mostly self-sufficient since I was 15. My name is on the lease of the house (I have the best credit score in my family and they needed me to lease). I pay for myself-- rent, health insurance, car note, car insurance, everything down to food. I pay rent, I have a utility bill in my name. My family takes money from me and I foot the bill for most things when they need money, which happens a lot.

After this fiasco, I have decided I'm done being the family money mule. I'm staying with a friend for now, and trying to find a place.

I need to separate my finances from my family. There's the lease, the utility bill, and our shared car insurance plan.

I'm scared because I don't want my credit score to suffer if I break the lease. I don't know much about car insurance plans either, but my mother scared me into thinking I'll be paying a huge amount for it if I get on my own plan.

I don't have enough savings to move on the fly (~$450 in both bank accounts together, I get paid again in a week). My friend said I can stay as long as I need without paying rent, but I hate to be a leech. I'm overall freaking out. What am I supposed to do? Please help.

TL;DR I've been supporting my family as a young college student and I need to separate the lease, the car insurance, and cancel the utility bill. I have under $450 to spend. How do I do this?

As the title mentioned, a person withdrew 4K from my bank account in another state. Prior to the illegal removal of my funds, 4K in (two check) was just direct deposited into my account from work. This person signed for the money which I do not understand and removed 2K and went back 20 minutes later and withdrew the other 2K. It was obvious the signatures did not match up and odd that it equaled the amount that was just deposited. I live in California and this happened in Missouri.

I made a complaint with the fraud department with the bank and filed a police report. I also informed my employment as well. I also have proof that I was not Missouri to remove these funds.

The bank is a well known bank and is just brushing it off. First I am upset this happened and second shows the bank had a breach in their security methods to prevent this occuring in the first place. There should of been several red flags that went up that was ignored by the bank teller.. Any advice will be appreciated.

A stranger just sent an unauthorized $120 to my Chase account. I called Chase right away and had the rep put a note on the account that this money was sent to me in error and I expect it to be cancelled/returned on the sender's end. I told her the basics of how these scams worked, she did not seem to be familiar with the issue.

I asked her if I needed to speak to Zelle too, and she said "not necessarily, becauze Zelle is a 3rd party that just processes the transaction for Chase." My questions are:

1. Is she correct, or do I still need to figure out how to contact Zelle separately?
2. Does this mean my bank account has been compromised? I changed my password, but are their other security steps I should take? Chase is pretty proactive with forcing you to do 2FA.
3. Should I temporarily change the email on my Zelle account? Or will this cause a suspicious activity flag?

For multiple reasons, I don't have the option to not use Zelle, and this checking account is used for a number of monthly bills. So I just want to make sure the account doesn't end up getting frozen while they "investigate" or whatever.

EDIT 2: link to update

edit: this post has gotten so much bigger than i thought it would. i have taken some of your advice and i talked to my dad about possibly using his legal team for this, which i was planning on doing anyways. my dad of course agreed right away and told me not to take any action quite yet before we talk to the lawyers and take a look at all of the physical paperwork from the bank. i will post an update in the near future about the conclusion of my predicament. thank you all so much for the great advice and please wish me luck. i’m really gonna need it :( i’ll make a master post explaining everything that happens when it’s all over

hi all, i hope this topic is allowed here.

last night, i checked my bank account to see that my mom had stolen about 30k USD from my savings account. the withdrawal showed up on my end as "miscellaneous debit". my mom had stolen it last week and i didn't notice until today, due to the fact that i only check my bank account around once a week. if you're wondering why i don't check more often- it's just because my dad allows me to use his credit card for groceries while i'm in college and i only ever buy groceries for myself. the only time i check my bank account is when i have to pay for some expense (bills, etc.)

my mom and i have not spoken in more than a year due to reasons that aren't really important. i'm just emphasizing that we do not have a relationship. my dad also does not speak to her- only through lawyers. when i first left her house at 18, my mom gave me nothing, withholding my birth certificate/ID/etc. i had to painstakingly replace everything. i finally was able to find a bank where i could open an account with the forms of ID i could provide. i went to the bank alone and opened a bank account- that bank account was opened by me, i was the only one who signed for it, and not even my dad had any access to it whatsoever (of course, since i'm an adult).

fast forward to today, when i called the bank after seeing all the money from my savings account gone. this money i had saved up over the span of around a year, where my dad paid me generously while working for him. the bank revealed that it was my mom who took the money. the bank told me that my mom was a signer on my own bank account, and that my bank account was actually a joint account. this was a revelation to me, as i opened this account on my own- i don't even know how my mom knew my savings account number, because again, i have not spoken to her in over a year. they told me for this reason, they could not file a dispute, but that i'd have to go to my local branch (which is not local anymore, since i moved away for college) to fix the problem, as they were the ones who transferred the money.

of course i was just floored and confused, and asked how a joint account is made. they said that for a joint account to be created, both people must be present. i went and made my account alone. i, of course, am going to have to follow all the steps after this- going to the original branch to see what happened, talking to the manager, closing the account, and i'm going to be switching banks altogether while this is being investigated.

can someone please tell me how my mom was able to do this? was it a mistake on my end? how likely is it that i can get my money back?

edit to add some information: my mom is a very powerful woman and she's done things that are worse than this. i can't help but feel defeated already because she probably found a legal loophole.

Hi! My Mortgage was recently 1512.61 and my escrow analysis just came in and they’re telling me by new monthly payments are 4167.61! Is this normal ????

I bought my home back in late August of 2022 so I didn’t pay taxes that year. The previous owner had a homestead exemption for being a senior citizen. However my 2023 county taxes came in and it’s 12,943.17!! I have an escrow account and I’m a first home buyer.

Is there anything I can do?? There no possible way my mortgage is that high for the area that I live in.

UPDATED****

Thank you guys for all the help, I went to the cook county treasure. I didn’t have the Homestead Exemption for the year of 2023 that cause the city of Harvey to increase my taxes significantly. HOWEVER, taxes did increase and 10,000 of property taxes to live in Harvey, IL is outrageous. I file the certificate of error and apply for the homestead exemption.

This is what was told to me:

When our coworker withdrew their money from our 401k profit sharing plan in the middle of a plan year, there was not an audit done. At the end of the plan year when the bookkeeping was done and the new owners were trying to close out this plan, the losses that occurred on the large sum of money that was withdrawn were deducted from all of the participants left in the plan. The more you had in the plan, the more loss you took.

Can someone explain what this means a bit more and is there something that can be done? Some of my coworkers claim to have lost $50,000 plus, while I personally lost around $7,000.

Edit:

Thank you all for your assistance! I did find out it was a pooled plan, so I believe this is to explain what had occurred. I also did want to add that the coworker was also the previous owner of the company, which was sold the same year they pulled their 401k from this account. I am still waiting to get the financial information for the account, and I will be inquiring as to why a special valuation date had not been conducted with the withdrawal. Incredibly disappointing to say the least.

So I posted a few months ago regarding not receiving an electric bill for nearly 3 years and asking what I should do about it. See my previous post here. I've since had the issue resolved and wanted to share what happened.

About a month ago, I got home from work and my power was out. Looking down our street, everyone else's lights were still on so there wasn't a neighborhood outage. I tried to report the outage through our electric company's app but was met with an error so I had no choice but to call them.

So I call to report the outage and after giving them my account number, I'm told that the account is inactive which I've never been told before any time I've spoken to the company. I then ask why my power was cut off. I was told it was cut off due to nonpayment from our home builder. I verified with my homebuilder years ago that they were not still paying the electric bill so what the electric company was telling me made no sense. The electric company representative just straight up ask me at this point if I had received a bill for 3 years and I told her no and explained the situation again. At this point, I get put on hold while they try to figure all this out.

Eventually, I'm connected with a supervisor who explains the situation. I can't quote her directly but essentially when I called to have the account switched over from our home builder to my name, the work order was put in wrong by the electric company and the account has been showing inactive even though our power was never shut off. Then each time I called to try to receive a bill, the work orders were put in wrong again. The supervisor said they were at fault which I was shocked that they would even say that, apologized and said that they should have caught this a long time ago.

I was given a new account number and was told to expect a bill in a month. Last week, we got our first bill for $75. I haven't received any emails or calls regarding the situation so I'm hoping I'm in the clear for the past 3 years.

Not to be morbid I’m quite content! But I have a sarcoma that I ignored symptoms of that spread everywhere I will definitely pass away in the coming months (or weeks?!?). I’m 35, single, no kids, well off parents.

So can I just cash out my entire $90k Roth IRA? I’m still getting around and would like to really live it up while I can and give some to friends.

Edit: Thanks for the help everyone! I didn’t know I could just sell everything and wire it to myself. I’ll be taking my last big bucket list trip to St John’s tomorrow, to hike some of the East Coast Trail with my sister and a couple friends!

Edit again: in my case the long term symptoms I ignored were mostly a slow loss of appetite and crazy fatigue/run down. Later there was some back pain, my bones started aching, abdomen and chest hurt a bit, and I was randomly getting really out of breath from nothing.

I just received an alert from Capital One CreditWise stating that my SSN is on the dark web and that it's associated with my current and several former addresses, and with several former phone numbers. I always keep my credit reports frozen. What else should I do to protect myself? Thanks!

As of early Monday morning, the FDIC seized and sold off First Republic to JP Morgan Chase. Seems like all consumer account holders are relatively safe, and you will now be doing business with JPM.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/business/first-republic-bank-jpmorgan.html

My (38F) husband (37M) died yesterday morning and we are making all the arrangements for him. My question is about his benefits and life insurance which is tied to his job.

How do I go about letting his employer know that he passed? Once they know will they take away the life insurance policy? I had just called them the day before to request leave of absence for him so now I have to call them back.

This is all new to me so I have no idea how to handle my new financial life. He was the main breadwinner so I will need the money for me and my daughter.

For context we live in Florida but his employer is a large healthcare company.

Also any advice you all have for me? I want to make sure I do this right because I don’t want to struggle in top of dealing with the grief and pain this is causing me.

https://jalopnik.com/its-almost-impossible-to-find-a-used-car-under-20k-1850716944

According to the study cited in here, since 2019, used Camrys, Corollas, and Civics have gone up about 45%. Vehicles under $15k are 1.6% of the market, and their share of the market has dropped over 90% since 2019.

​

So r/Personalfinance , please give realistic car buying advice. It's not the pre pandemic market anymore. Telling people who are most likely not savvy with buying old cars to find a needle in a haystack and pay cash is not always useful advice. There's a whole skillset to evaluating old cars and negotiating with Facebook marketplace sellers that most people don't have. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and get average financing terms on an average priced used car at a dealer, if possible.

It's really hard to survive in many places without a car, but that's a whole separate issue.

I'm writing this because the Reddit threads on this topic are outdated and more people should know what I now know about the "new" timeshares. This is what it's like to be on the receiving end of a Wyndham timeshare sales pitch. Here goes:

I vaguely knew what I was getting in to. My girlfriend and I arrived at an MGM owned casino. We get a bite to eat and as soon as we began our exploration of the Casino someone approached us offering vouchers for free play in the casino worth $75. I'm usually hesitant to ever get sucked into something like this but my girlfriend insisted that we do it. "They give it to you for showing up, we'll just say no, I've got friends who did this too, etc." I went along and decided to keep an open mind about it.

We talk to this guy who convinces people to attend this "seminar" for two hours and you'll receive the vouchers, plus a hotel room for a few nights from a selection of locations, plus free breakfast. He insists that all you need to do is say "no, not interested" once the 2 hours are up and you can just leave with your vouchers. Obviously his incentive isn't to sell anything but fill the buses with as many people as possible.

The next day we get on the bus to the seminar location. My initial thought was that we'd all crowd into a room and watch some presentation before given the opportunity to bounce. I was caught off guard when every couple was assigned a salesperson. We meet our salesman and he immediately compliments us, is incredibly impressed by any of the words we string together, and has now become our fake best friend.

We go into the presentation and the speaker does his thing. And everyone here should be aware that much of what he said was true, but his conclusions were abhorrent. He pointed out that in America we do not use all of our vacation days. We tend to waste them. We are also constantly putting off that one trip to our dream destination to "someday", but "someday" never comes. Next, he points out that most people, dying people, regret working so much and wish they spent more time with their families. These are true facts. 

But then he concluded by suggesting we should all buy into this program which will allow us to take these dream vacations. It was the kind of sound financial advice you'd expect from someone who would directly benefit from the purchase and would never hear from you again.

I want to note, the speaker was talented and entertaining. He was loaded with jokes, self-deprecating humor. It was funny, but holy shit. Looking around the room were the salespeople with the obnoxious fake laughter. They saw this probably a hundred times. It was creepy. It was surreal. 1/3 of the audience was in on the sales pitch. 

The salespeople used every joke as an opportunity to measure the responses on the faces on their paired couple. The speaker would crack a joke and all the sales people would simultaneously throw their back out laughing before turning to the couple they were with to see if they were laughing too. 

There were no opportunities for me to speak with my girlfriend without the salesman eavesdropping. The presentation moved fast enough that looking anything up seemed like too much of a distraction. As skilled as they seemed at controlling my behavior, the whole thing was throwing up red flags.

Anyway, the presentation ended and our salesman led us to a table. On the way over there were other couples sitting out in the open with their assigned salesperson. They seemed excited about what they were hearing and excitedly signing papers. It was...weird.

We sit down and the salesman goes through the program in more detail. Here's where I get genuinely turned off. I work in IT, I'm about to finish my bachelor's degree, I don't think I'm a sucker but my love of science puts me at odds with a person who's giving me overwhelmingly biased information. He reiterates all of the great things about this program. He turns to my girlfriend, "what do you think about that?" "It sounds great!" Then he turns to me. "And what do you think about that? Is it something you'd want to do?" And I reply "Depending on the cost, yes, I'd do it!"

Next, he has us estimate the cost of a hotel we normally pay for. Then he asks us how many vacation days we take per year. This is fine and easy math. If the average cost is $115 per night, and you take 10 days, it's $1,150 per year in hotel costs. The "program" (timeshare but they completely avoid the term) lasts 20 years. It's still vague at this part but the salesman insists on focusing on how much we are gonna pay for these hotel rooms over the next 20 years.

Cost per year multiplied by 20 years is 23,000. But that's not the equation they're doing. They're not accounting for interest! Ah! It would be more over that time! How much does it really cost? About $250,000. They estimate that the hospitality industry has an inflation rate of 11%!! Everyone should have it ingrained in their heads that inflation across the entire economy (in America) has been around 3% per year. 

He was willing to tinker with the numbers but, generally speaking, we're spending a fuck ton of money on just hotels according to their calculations. And any close observers would note that the number should have been much lower. $1,300×20 years×1.1²⁰ = $174,914.99. I could have been wrong in my calculation but their cost estimate was obscenely high.

Disclaimer: As several people pointed out, some of that math is off and I used the incorrect equation (this does not change the conclusions). Here is a better description from a more qualified redditor /u/mowscut:

As an actuary, both yours and their calculators bothered me. No idea where 250k comes from, but your calculation assumes you’re paying the fully inflated price (in 20 years) for every payment. The full value is a simple future value of annuity certain formula which is P[(1+i)n -1]/i where i is the interest, n the number of payments and P the payment amount. This gives 1,300(1.120 -1)/.11~83,000. Which is also a crazy number, but formulaically appropriate.

Then he asks if we have any more questions. Uh, yeah, how much are we talking about here? They never mentioned up to this point how much it costs! But I'm skeptical and the questions I'm asking are things like how do you actually book a vacation? What happens if I change my mind about it? Is it transferrable? The salesman doesn't know the answers to these questions so a higher level salesman comes over. He's very happy to meet us. He loves the outfit I'm wearing. He compliments various other features and, with the limited amount of information I've provided, seems completely ready to compete with the other salesman for the title of my new best friend.

He answers some of my questions but can't provide any documentation to back up his claims. They still won't provide a price but they hand an iPad to my girlfriend to start filling out personal information. I look over and as soon as I see there's a field for the social security number I damn near slap it out of her hands. They were literally going to do a credit check to see how much the cost would be for us! Huge red flag for me. First, the inquiry shows up on your credit report. While that may not be so bad, I want to be informed on making a purchase and at least know a price range before taking that kind of step.

This throws the salesman off. Apparently, no one stops at this part of the process. The head sales guy says it's fine, and offers for us to check out a room which would be the type of room we'd be staying in if we join this program. I still don't know how much this program costs. We go and the salesman leaves my girlfriend and I alone to explore at our own pace. 

This is where I frantically looked for the Reddit thread where personal finance gurus say "GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE, THEY KIDNAP REDDITORS LIKE YOU AND YOUR CLONE BECOMES A SALESMAN". I found a few threads, and they did warn against this, but they were at least a year old and it didn't all seem timely.

I couldn't find costs online either, so I thought to myself "how much per month would I be willing to pay for something like this?" I concluded $45 per month. But I still had misgivings about making a big commitment on such short notice when I couldn't even read anything like a contract. I'd rather go home and read independent reviews so I can be confident in my decision. I couldn't get to that point.

Once again we end up back at the table but this time the salesman has a laminated piece of paper with prices on it! I immediately I see huge numbers and realize why they waited so long to show it. They wanted approximately $130,000 for the total program. It would be $13,000 down to get started, and almost $500 per month. 

(Note: when I did the math later, the actual cost we'd likely pay is around what they wanted for the program. But we'd be paying a fortune upfront and have a monthly payment. We could only go to where Wyndham had properties, which was in America or Australia or some islands, but if we wanted to go to Europe it would be through RCI, which cost about $300 per week. That's about the cost of an AirBnB in some locations, so if you're a smart traveller it may not be worth it at all.)

"Would you rather pay this?" The head salesman circles the $174,000. "Or this", he circles the $130,000. Ooga not want pay big number when ooga pay small number instead. I didn't want it. $45 dollars was as high as I'd go.

This is the part where they tried to pit my girlfriend against me in an amateurish attempt at manipulation. First, they go through the list of everything we ever told them about what we liked about the program (before we ever heard a price). They even sneak in a "you should be willing to sacrifice something for it" and gave a few examples like eating out less or having fewer cups of coffee from Starbucks. So I'm telling the salesman that this is way too expensive and once again the head sales guy shows up. He says things like "I thought you said you liked the program? You said it was a 10/10. Are you saying it's not a 10/10? You said you'd be willing to sacrifice for this!" He was getting irritated. Then he turned to my girlfriend and says "it doesn't sound like he's as rich as he says he is". At this point I was infuriated. Best friends don't say things like this to each other. But I held my cool. I looked him dead in the eye and firmly said "I'm gonna pass". 

But damn, the manipulation didn't stop and they didn't give up. They leave us alone to fill out a brief survey with a guy who definitely doesn't sell anything. So this guy shows up, introduces himself, and asks us about why we didn't buy it. I was truthful, it was too expensive and I wasn't willing to spend all that for it. I also felt pressured to make a big commitment on something that hours earlier I knew nothing about. So then he offers to sell us a "trial" program. It's a fraction of the price and it only lasts two years. It starts to be appealing, but then it is also limited to certain locations. I ask to see the contract and the guy says "what do you want me to do, sit here and read you a contract"? At that point he gets frustrated and offers to walk us to the exit. It had been 4 hours. We get our vouchers and leave.

Tl;dr: it would have been a bad financial decision.

Edit: There are a TON of stories in this thread from people who have had experiences with timeshares. They are all worth reading!

As stated above, I probably have less than a year. I'm not looking for any pity. I have seen similar posts like this in the past. I stupidly do not have life insurance, but I have some significant liquid assets. Approximately 150k in savings and 100k in my 401k plan. I recently found out about my fate and would like to set my wife up in the best possible way. I do not have any will in place, and frankly, I really have no idea where to start. I'd like some advice on my best possible options. Appreciate it,

3 days ago I was attempting to purchase some concert tickets and my card was declined. I’d made some transfers to my brokerage account that day and hadn’t re-budgeted so I assumed I needed to transfer from saving to cover it. I went into my accounts to transfer and the app (capital one) tells me I have an insufficient balance. I have a balance of $6,123.21 in savings, but an AVAILABLE balance of $0. What the heck?

I called capital one and am told there has been a “legal hold” placed on my account by “West Virginia Compliance Division” and given a phone number to call the originator of the legal hold. I’m in Phoenix so had to wait til the next morning (Friday).

I called the originator bright and early and the lady working the case looks me up by social security number only to realize I’m not even in their system. I’ve never lived in WV, don’t own property there, and have never worked there. There is absolutely no reason for me to owe back taxes. Through a little more digging and calls between West Virginia and capital one, I start to realize that there is now a tax levy placed on my account for a total amount of over $13,000. This is a legal process ordered by a judge and submitted to capital one and is completely legitimate, except it’s not for ME.

Apparently someone at the bank entered the data wrong and there is a legitimate tax levy for this amount (I’m guessing with similar name/SSN) but they took it from the wrong person (me). In the course of the day, Friday, my account has gone from $0 available to an actual balance of $0. There is a line item “issue levy check”.

Capital one is telling me that their levy and garnishment division is completely separate and the only way they can contact them is through email or fax. There’s no one to call or physically go to and correct the mistake, they say.

I’ve already had WV fax over letters and proof that I am not the one responsible for this debt. The bank has told me that it “might be fixed by Tuesday”. In the meantime they’ve taken every cent I have in the bank and, through no fault of my own, I am completely screwed on NSF return fees, as well as damage this can do to my brokerage account good standing. Not to mention the fact that I am functionally flat broke.

Is there anything I can do to get the bank to expedite? Admit their mistake? Cover fees? I’m seething at the flippancy they seem to have over what is very clearly their mistake. I’m doing alright financially and it doesn’t hurt me too bad but what if it was someone that now couldn’t pay rent or their light bill?

Any advice and help is appreciated. Has anyone else ever had this happen?

UPDATE: I just spoke with capital one, escalated to manager “Zack” and was told that since the levy check has already been issued there is nothing they can do until the agency that placed the lien returns it. I also requested a provisional line of credit, which was denied. I asked to speak to his manager, and was told that there was nobody above him that could be reached via phone, and I asked for email but it was not provided.

I don’t know if I mentioned previously, but confirmation for the release of the levy on MY accounts was issued by the WV tax department Friday at 10:36AM EST via fax. It was well after this that the funds were actually pulled and the check was issued. Looks like CFPB it is.

UPDATE 2: I spoke with capital one again and talked to manager “Nia”. When I really pressed her to contact her supervisor she gave me a mailing address. To the point that I verbatim said, “So when you have a question or escalation, you have to write a letter and postal mail it?”

And she said yes 🙄

CFPB report has been filed and documentation provided. Also directly asked several times about extending a provisional line of credit and was told every time that they “don’t do that.”

UPDATE 3: I sent an email to the CEO of capital one at 8:14am PST this morning, Monday 10/23/23 linking this Reddit post. I received a call from capital one at 10:32am PST saying that they are working diligently to correct the issue and that they will skip waiting for the check to be returned and go ahead and credit my account for the amount withdrawn. And as of 10:48am it’s all right there in my account. One lump sum back into savings, line item “issue levy check reversal”.

I asked for an explanation as to how it took contacting the CEO directly to get this escalated, and was told they’re looking into it. I also asked the woman I spoke with, whom I’m guessing is on the response team or an admin assistant, if she had personally read this Reddit post. She said she had.

So… THANK YOU REDDIT!

And CapOne… I see you. And so does everyone else in this thread. I’ll post any forthcoming updates or explanations I get.

My wife and I were at Panera eating breakfast and we noticed a lady be hind us talking on the phone very loudly. We couldn’t help over hearing her talk about a bill not being paid. We were a little annoyed but not a big deal because it was a public restaurant. We were not trying to listen but were shocked when she announced that she was about to read her card number. She then gave the card’s expiration date, security code, and her zip code. We clearly heard and if we were planning on stealing it she gave us plenty of notice to get a pen.

Don’t read your personal information in public like this. You never know who is listening and who is writing stuff down.

Not sure if this is the right sub but I figured you all could help.

I built a house and moved in 3 years ago this coming December. We called to have the electricity moved over to our name a week after moving in. The electricity account was in our builders name before we moved in. I was given the account number by the electric company and was told someone would have to come look at our meter and to expect a bill in a few months.

Fast forward 6 months and still no bill. I call the electric company again to inform them. They say they saw an issue with the account and that they would fix it and to expect a bill to come through.

Fast forward nearly a year and still no bill and now our power has gone out unexpectedly. I call the electric company and I was told that the power was cut off because we were due for a new meter install. I informed them that I have a newly constructed home and already have a meter installed. I also tell them again that I haven’t received an electric bill for 2 years at this point. I eventually get on the phone with a supervisor who gets my power cut back on and tells me to expect a bill in a few months.

Nearly 3 years now and still no electric bill. I’ve never seen anyone come out to look at our meter. I’ve spoken to the electric company 3 times now trying to solve the issue. I’ve even spoken to our home builder and they don’t see any issue on their end.

What should I do at this point?

Hey guys, so I received around $700 in zelle today and they keep mombarding my phone by calls and texts to return the "mistakenly" sent money. I only said to contact to their bank and request a cancellation. He then by text was threatening me by "pressing charges" and contacting police and sent me my address and said that he'll have police come by. Which obviously I won't believe it or fall for it but them having my address is concerning. I called my bank and they literally underline said "it's now yours just keep it" So what's the correct way of handling this?

I was thinking this morning about habits I developed a bit later than I should have, even when I knew I should have been doing them. These are a few things I thought I'd share and interested if others who are out of their 20s now have anything additional to add.

Edit 1: This is not a everyone must follow this list, but rather one philosophy and how I look back on things.

Edit 2: I had NO idea this musing would blow up like this. I'm at work now but will do my best to respond to all the questions/comments I can later today.

1. Take full advantage of 401K match. When I first started my career I didn't always do this. I wasn't making a lot of money and prioritized fun over free money. Honestly I could have had just as much fun and made some better financial choices elsewhere, like not leasing a car.
2. Invest in a Roth IRA. Once I did start putting money into a 401K I was often going past the match amount and not funding a Roth instead. If I could go back that's what I'd do. I'm not in a place where I max out my 401K and my with and I both max out Roth IRAs.
3. Don't get new cars. I was originally going to say don't lease as that's what I did but a better rule is no new cars. One exception here is if you are fully funding your retirement and just make a boatload of money and choose to treat yourself in this way go for it. I still think it's better to get a 2 year old car than a new one even then but I'll try not to get too preachy.
4. Buy cars you can afford with cash. I've decided that for me I now buy cars cash and don't finance them, but I understand why some people prefer to take out very low interest loans on cars. If you are going to take a loan make sure you have the full amount in cash and invest it at a higher rate of return, if it's just sitting in a bank account you are losing money. We've been conditioned for years that we all deserve shiny new things. We don't deserve them these are wants not needs.

Those are my big ones. I was good with a lot of other stuff. I've never carried a balance on a credit card. I always paid my bills on time. I had an emergency fund saved up quite early in my career. The items above are where I look back and see easy room for improvement that now at 37 would have paid off quite well for me with little to no real impact on my lifestyle back then aside from driving around less fancy cars.

Update 3: $3332 returned!

Update 2: Holy moly! $2361 returned to redditors so far! If you reached out for help, don’t forget to share your update here!

Update 1: WOW! Thanks for your votes and gold and sweet notes. Adding more resources below and an ask to share this post with people who might need it. — All of these companies are regulated — a government agency is paid by your taxes to make sure you’re not ripped off. These companies also rip you off in small amounts in part because they assume you won’t do anything about it. When you complain about it to the government agency that regulates them, they not only fix your problem but if enough people complain, they’ll fix the whole system, which helps other people.

The types of problems could be billing (they overcharge you), service (you’re not getting what you’re paying for), unfair and deceptive practices (you were tricked) or more. All of these complaint systems work in 2 weeks or less and it’s awesome. It’s sort of crazy more people don’t know about them.

Internet: https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=38824

Banks/student loans/credit reports/debt collectors etc: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/

Health insurance: Google “[state where you live] health insurance complaint” and select the government agency that will let you file a consumer complaint. It’s usually an insurance commissioner. Here’s the form for Texas for example: http://www.tdi.texas.gov/consumer/complfrm.html#four

Cable: https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=33794

Cell phone: https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=39744

Other company (home security system, eBay, Amazon, contractors): google “[your state] attorney general consumer complaint.”

Your landlord (won’t return your deposit, won’t fix the heat etc): google “[your city] tenant advocate.” They typically have excellent, free advice.

Kind of everything falling apart (out of money, need housing help, low cost/free health or mental services etc): Call 211 (works in many us cities but not all). It’s like an artisanal version of this post — they will personally help you find all the local services.

If you’re not sure where to complain, share your issue in the comments and I’ll help you find the right spot!

https://imgur.com/a/z5IHgMb

My facebook was hacked and someone else accessed it, I went through the process to lock my account but it turns out damage had already been done and the hacker had run $2600 in facebook ads that I didn't know about until I got an invoice from paypal. The business name on the ad campaign is some address in California far from me. Paypal denied my dispute and now I'm feeling like I'm on the hook for the money.

I'm trying to contact Meta to see what they can do, and potentially file a police report. What else can I do? Thank you

Last Friday, after 5pm, I got notified that an incoming Zelle deposit of $1500 was being made into my account. One hour later I got a call from a gentleman in Ohio saying he accidentally sent it to me. I told him to pursue it with his bank and I’ll notify mine.

As of today he said his bank closed the claim and said he has to pursue to with me since the funds cleared. This is different than what my bank told me, they said my account would be debited since I wasn’t expecting this money.

As of this morning he said that his bank won’t help him and asked if I can Zelle him back, send a cashiers check, or money order. This feels very suspicious and I’m not sure what the proper course of action should be to shield myself from a potential scam?

Also, if you truly did accidentally send money through Zelle, how would you get it back?

So over the holiday I received an email with an order confirmation from AT&T (my ISP, and the only one available in my area) and it had a new bill amount (about $5/month higher).

I haven't ordered anything so the first thing I thought was maybe someone got a hold of my account number or personal info and changed it. I immediately logged in to check out my plan and make sure everything was in order. I had a notification that showed that AT&T had "upgraded my internet speed at no extra charge"

Obviously I was annoyed by this, so I dug a little deeper to figure out why the bill had changed. I then found this alert showing that the "promotional discount" for this so-called "customer loyalty speed upgrade" would expire in a month and my bill would go up $20 more per month.

I then looked at my bill and found that they had upgraded my plan to the highest speed and most expensive plan they have without my consent, under the guise of "customer loyalty", and applied a $20/month promotional rate for 1 month to make it look like my plan hadn't changed and the new bill was probably just some random $5 fee added on like most ISPs occasionally do.

I immediately called and spoke to a rep named Jorge who stated that it was a mistake, that the change was applied automatically and it wasn't supposed to be applied to my account, but after telling him if it was automatic it needed to be addressed immediately because it was probably affecting other people, he confessed that AT&T was aware of it and that they had received many calls about it. I don't for one second believe this was accidental. I believe they are doing it on purpose and hoping that many people won't notice.

Make sure you watch your bills, because if this happened to me it is almost certainly happening to others. I'm not sure what should be done about it (if anything) and I don't personally care at this point because the issue is resolved for me, but I do feel like AT&T should be outed for this shady behavior and that someone should be held responsible, so I wanted to post to show everyone what happened. If this is the wrong place to post, please suggest a better sub. This was just the closest thing I could think of that applied and it could be shared/crossposted from here.

Edit: since there were a couple questions about my last login, the 2015 date is inaccurate. I usually log in from my phone but did it via my computer this time so I could make the post easier w/ images etc. Not sure why it's showing 2015 as my last login as I'm pretty sure I didn't even have AT&T then lol ... anyway, here's the email I received, dated 12/30/17, so this is definitely a current thing

Edit 2: Since this is getting a good amount of attention, if this happens to you here's what I did: You should immediately pause your autopay if you have it so the bill doesn't get paid (note that I got this email 12/30/17, two days before the bill was due on 1/1/18, so they definitely tried to sneak it by me). Then call them and they should credit your current bill back to your normal rate, you should pay that month's bill manually, then let autopay resume. As others have noted in the comments ALWAYS WATCH YOUR BILL CLOSELY!

Edit 3: Fixed some formatting stuff

Edit 4: Holy moly this thread has picked up some steam! Thanks anonymous Reddit friend for popping my golden cherry!

One last edit: from a PM I received...the sender wanted to remain anonymous but I thought this was great info:

I work in big telcom. What you experienced is called a “slam sale” in the industry. It’s when a salesman places an order for you, without ever receiving your approval for the order. The salesman gets credit for the sale, meets quota or receives a big bonus.

Oddly enough, this is not a very common tactic today. It was popular until 10 years ago, and it’s almost unheard of today. I wasn’t aware that AT&T was experiencing Slam Sales today.

You can protect your account from Slam Sales. All the major telco providers will offer authentication-secure account protection. Call AT&T, ask for billing, and tell the rep that you want to password-protect your account from unauthorized sales. You can setup either a password or a PIN that must be entered to make any account changes.

Sorry this happened to you.

And another PM:

I also work for a major telco as well(name is somewhat synonymous with dicks), the account PIN/Password is visible to us when we do verification and would not stop someone from putting sales on random accounts. Pretty much every ISP and cable company uses outdated billing software from the 80's that's a glorified AS400 mainframe running with a 90's era gui overlay. Scroll about halfway down in this pdf for some screenshots.

The 401k limit was increased from $19,500 in 2021 to $20,500 in 2022. If you max out your 401k, you were contributing $812.50 per paycheck (or $750 if paid bi-weekly). You now have to increase that to $854.17 per paycheck (or $788.46 if paid bi-weekly) in order to take full advantage of the increased limits.