Quest for Bargains and Buyer Beware!

In our quest for finding good bargains  of all kinds while full timing in an RV, we have started signing up for different notifications from different sources, mostly restaurants...We do get Groupon notifications, and recently, we started "liking" our favorite restaurants on Facebook, hoping to get coupons for them. But--BUYER BEWARE!

This month Eldy noticed our phone bill was 20.00 higher than normal. It's consistently a certain amount every month, and all of a sudden, it went up. Sparky had just recently upgraded her phone to an iphone, but that charge was expected and we paid it last month. This month's bill was beyond that....off to the AT & T store we went to get an explanation.

It turns out that certain offers and notifications that you sign up for are passed on to a "third party subscription service" and that charge is 9.99 attached to your phone bill when you sign up to get notices of deals. Problem is, we never saw any "fine print" about any third party subscription services ANYWHERE. Yes, the ordinary cell phone data charges and instant messages count, but not a hefty 9.99 or 9.95 phone bill amount! We don't know which application or company or restaurant or Facebook or bank (not likely a bank, AT & T said) farms out the signup process and bonks you with a charge. ARGGGGHHHH! So you get penalized for signing up for something to try and save money! We are going to look carefully at what we've done lately to see if we can figure out WHO was culprit that caused our bill to go up. While we were at the store, the AT & T rep called the central office and had the two charges taken off our bill. Yay! Now, for some detective work to see if we can figure out where those charges originated.

The AT & T rep said that if it happens again, to just come into the store and they will take it off. Wonderful! But I'd still like to know where it's coming from! I got a mysterious text message today, and all it said was...."0-93-d or -0"  I have no idea where that came from or what it means...I see a phone number at the top, but didn't want to call it in case someone is trying to gain access to my phone or hack into it. Sometimes if you reply "STOP" in the message line, that will cancel whatever service is using the texting, but I got a message a couple of hours later, "HUNH? Who is this?" I left it alone and deleted it. Technology can be daunting at times, ya know?

Until later.....

Neatly organized and ready for the baby--Heck, we are all ready!