Comments on: Fees Suck – Don’t Pay Them

By: 100 Lessons You Should Learn from Frugal People

100 Lessons You Should Learn from Frugal People — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:28:32 +0000

[...] Fees Suck-Don't Pay Them: Save your money by avoiding fees. [...]

By: Josh Heckathorn @ Creditnet

Josh Heckathorn @ Creditnet — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:21:38 +0000

You’re right…it’s amazing how many people are just plain scared to ask.

I was charged a fee for making more than 5 withdrawals overseas from a non-Wells Fargo ATM a few weeks ago. So, I took 30 seconds to write an email to Wells, and they responded the next day by waiving it and crediting my account immediately. It couldn’t have been easier.

By: Nora

Nora — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:36:02 +0000

A lot of great advice here, and I agree with you, you shouldn’t have to pay half of the fees imposed on you. A lot of times companies bank on the fact that their customers won’t complain about the fee they are paying, because they know their customer will automatically assume that there isn’t anything that can be done about it and therefore it is easy money for them. If you do complain, companies, especially in this economy, are going to work with you and most likely waive the fee…(you may have to do a little work to get there but…) they would rather lose a few bucks here and there in the grand scheme of things than an entire account… You are smart to try and have superluous fees waived…

By: Roger

Roger — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:06:49 +0000

Great advice, and fantastic title; as soon as I read it, I knew I had to include in my latest round up. It’s good that you were able to negotiate your fee away; I remember doing so when my bank charged me an overdrawn fee when my insurance company lost the check I sent them. It was a pain, but I did get it resolved (and signed up for automatic payment ASAP to avoid having that problem in the future).

By: Kyle

Kyle — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:12:10 +0000

Great post. I use similar strategies and neogicated an overdraft fee away a couple of weeks ago. Most banks are give you a lot of leeway on the first or second offense.

By: Ashley

Ashley — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:57:56 +0000

Nice, just like Cher’s dad said on Clueless, everything can be negotiated. 80% of the times I’ve called a company to negotiate a fee or charge, the people I’ve talked to have been really nice and helpful. It’s not anything to be afraid of, the worst they can say is no!

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:59:02 +0000

No, you can't always negotiate your way out of fees that are imposed based on your direct actions. There, the solution would be to A) find a service with lower or no fees (for the stock trading example, Zecco) or to B) change your behaviors so that you incur fewer fees (for example, saving up a bunch of money in a savings account and then buying a large amount of stock all at once).

By: kenyantykoon

kenyantykoon — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:20:37 +0000

we impose some unnecessary fees on ourselves sometimes by being impatient like for instance too many small fees due to short term trading in the stock market which add up and eat away at any returns. I highly doubt that one can negotiate their way out of a mess like this

By: Bobby

Bobby — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:30:50 +0000

Wouldn’t that be great if we could just not pay fees altogether. However this is not the case and negotiating them down is the only way to reduce the burden. You give good advice and it important to let people know they have the power to negotiate down ridiculously high fees and hidden costs.

By: Abigail Johnson

Abigail Johnson — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:35:22 +0000

That’s why I hate credit cards… I’m afraid of debts.