Last week I thought I would be a good little wife and give our truck a bath. Once waiting in the 10 vehicle line up I noticed that I didn’t have any change and so I ran in to the convenient store that was attached to the Hughes, there was a little line at the change machine so I thought I would look around the store… bad idea, spending more than I had to, but what the hey! Picked up one of those nifty Absorber cloths… A-M-A-Z-I-N-G… and a few rags that they conveniently cut and wrapped in packages of 5… very fond of these to wipe the insides of the doors and the foot marks from holding the door open. Went to pay for my few items - $15 dollars – not bad… I figure it’ll take me about $5 to do my whole truck.
As I’m walking back to my truck… feeling pockets… “efffffffffffff! Where are my keys?!?!?!”… awesome! Look inside the truck, yup - there they are… threw them in my purse, I must have exchanged them for my wallet. GAWD! Call Derek, he’s working on the other side of the city and can’t come meet me… “call a locksmith… Sorry, that’s all that you can do…” First, I call my project manager and leave a long lengthy message… a reason why I never leave messages, it’s like I’m actually talking to you, leaving breaks in my sentences for you to respond, when in reality I’m leaving you a message… next, call a locksmith; “oh good, you can be here in the next 20 mins… Perfect, I’ll just continue washing my truck, I'm in the third last stall on the left”
As I’m wiping down my truck with the absorber the locksmith shows up, “HI! Thanks for coming so fast!” he mumbles something about $32.95, I nodded my head and jimmies the slim jim down the passenger side window and pops the lock – estimated time, a whole 53 seconds. Sweet! Reach for the purse, grip the keys and put the lanyard around my neck… take out my debit card and he motions me to his work truck. He swipes my card, enters the amount, presses OK and hands the debit machine to me… I think weird, doesn’t the customer usually get to verify the amount… but continue anyways, its past 1:00 and I’m officially late for work! The receipt prints out… WTF!! $82.95 – “Dude, I thought you said it was $32.95?”
Officially the most expensive carwash to date!
The most current event of highway robbery that I have encountered was at my dentist office...
Yesterday went for my semi-annual cleaning and checkup, the dental hygienist wasn’t as talkative as she normally is and she even left a couple of times… like left me in the chair with the spit sucky thing, I couldn’t see if someone called her or if she got a call on her cell but every time she returned I would hear a few drawers opening and closing.
In any case, I usually have to pay $10 for my fluoride because it’s not covered by my benefits for some reason… good thing I allocated my flex spending to my Health Spending Account this year! HA! The chick at the desk mentioned that there is a remaining balance… so of course expecting $10… she takes my debit card, swipes it, and enters the amount, fortunately she lets me verify the amount… oh good… $37.78?!?!?! “SORRY, I usually only pay $10, what is this cost for?” she replies, “It’s the extra cost of what the insurance doesn’t cover”. I reluctantly, press ok and proceed with the payment. Apparently my Dentist office has increased their prices since I was there last in September… this type of information, I find, would be very informative before getting the work done. I would have rather opt out the fluoride, since its increase of $18 in the past 6 months, gawd!
Yes - I wonder why, the dentist does the billing this way – if your scheduled for the regular maintenance; the exam, scaling/scraping, polishing and/or fluoride, why can’t they bill me before hand that way if I find the cost to be unnecessary then I could reduce the bill by eliminating one of the services…
Like when your shopping at one of your favorite stores and grab a whole bunch of items, the sales associate that rings in your desired items tells you the cost, and most of the time I, personally have grabbed too many things… do I really need that white tee? Those socks? What’s really necessary? What do I really need/want? Most of the time, shoppers will reevaluate and remove items to keep the costs reasonable and within budget. It’s not like in a restaurant where the same payment method is applied – if I were to get bad service, and then the server would receive a tip that would complement the service I received…
I’m not tipping the dental hygienist. So why pay after the fact of receiving the service?
I don’t know... I don’t mean to sound like a cheap ass, it’s just me venting about all these extra unexpected costs!
I would have to agree that dental offices should inform its patients about additional costs not covered through private insurance. The first time I went to my new dentist in Grande Prairie, I had to pay $58! That's robbery! When I asked why, I was told it was because the dentist has some state of the art crap-ola. Thanks for telling me ahead of time. Next time I'll go to a dentist in the slums.
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thanks for the comment Steph!
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