I liked the “want of a horseshoe nail” poem that started your article, because that summarizes it perfectly … small things can add up into extremely large consequences, especially when your wallet is involved. I’ll remember this story anytime someone says, “but it’s ONLY $4!”

My cell phone wasn’t working properly at the time, I did not have a document scanner and I needed to deposit a check into my bank account which is not local to where I live. I contacted my bank and requested deposit slips and envelopes be sent to my home address. Some time had past and the deposit slips and envelopes had not arrived as anticipated.

So, in the middle of one night I emailed a status question to my bank and within a few minutes a poorly worded reply arrived in my inbox stating an apology and confirming that deposit envelopes and slips were on the way.
A few days later, I checked my bank account and noticed a small nominal charge had been deducted for deposit slips and envelopes. I must disclose that this was one in a series of timely events that annoyed me about my bank at the time.

Quickly I checked my savings account, did a few worst case scenario calculations and decided to pay off my car loan which I had started about six months prior to this decision. In one impulse driven action, I decided “Oh you are going to charge me for free slips and envelopes are you? Well then, no interest for you!” Thus, I paid off a car loan that had barely just begun over a nominal fee for free deposit slips and envelopes.

I work in administration at a university, and the business office will not charge late fees on outstanding student fees that are less than $10. However, I have seen students neglect to pay a remaining $15 of tuition, get dinged $50 for not paying tuition on time and an additional $12.50 for missing a payment (these are late fees by two different offices) and then get assessed additional $12.50 fees every month for sometimes several months. OUCH!

Sounds like having a car was a lot more trouble than it was worth in that area though! I’ve just sold my car for a similar reason since I’ve moved to a city now!

Stress aside, you also have to think about what your time is worth. If you can make more money elsewhere, then spending hours dealing with this mistake comes at a huge opportunity cost as well.

I would have paid the deductible and gotten on with my life.

I will also sometimes write a check and put a notation at the bottom what it is for. Then if a company sends me a bill, I send them a photocopy of the front and back of the check and it clearly states what it’s for. That saved me something like $700 (I forget the exact amount, it was a for a full tank) with our oil company who tried a double-bill when they lost the first payment.

From the repair company’s point of view, the problem could have been dealt with much more easily if Honey had taken the car back a lot sooner. I’m not putting the blame on Honey, but I’ve been a customer service rep in situations where a small problem could easily have been fixed if it had been dealt with before it become a big problem. As consumers, we have responsibilities too.

Of course, I’ve also missed “the nail” a few times myself, so I sympathize! Hindsight is 20/20, so they say.

It looks like in the case she felt it was worth her time to fight it. I guess it would be interesting to get feedback from people who have been in similar situation and observe in retrospect if the time spent haggling is worth it in the end.

Example, if someone know it would take 3 months and 15 hours on the phone to remove a incorrect charge on an account for $5, would it still be worth it on principle? I tend to err on the side of paying and then trying to not to do business with that company or individual again due to the time constraints.

They also have an incentive to keep you happy, or you’ll be shopping for a different insurance company. This would have been one of the first phone calls I would have made in this situation.

I would have paid for the replacement early-on, documented everything, and followed-up with the insurance company to get reimbursed since the original repair was clearly done wrong.

It gets done way faster and doesn’t waste my time. The benefit of having a working car every day for several months is worth more to me than $4 or even $50.

The assumption that you wouldn’t have had any recourse once you paid the $50 to me seems wrong. I pay deductibles all the time, and after reviewing things, get paid back if I can document that I should not have had to pay anything.

However, having done that, I find that sometimes we sometimes get a check out of the blue. After our youngest was already 4 years old, we got a check for $238 from the hospital where he was born. Apparently, the insurance company had finally paid up.

That was unusual, both because it was a larger amount and for the delay in our reimbursement. I would say the normal time lapse between us paying for a medical bill we know we don’t owe and having our money returned to us is about 18 months. We don’t always get the money back, but sometimes decent credit and the assurance that our pediatrician will treat our child (because his office doesn’t think we’re deadbeats) is more important than the money or being right.

One question, I always ask myself after an unpleasant ordeal is that knowning what I know now would I have any regrets doing what I did.