Would you check a bill to save $5? $500 or $37,000

December 21, 2010 by
Filed under: Economics, General Budgeting 

This past week I have been pouring over receipts and bills for which our apartment body corporate are being charged. These are back-payments relating to the past 3 years – where the developer has been paying for upkeep on the property, when really the body corporate (that is – a collection of the owners) should have been paying them.

Except maybe they shouldn’t have been.

Which is where my “I have no life and get a sick kick out of playing with spreadsheets and scrutinising receipts” skills come in.

Every single one of the receipts was uploaded on to a website for us to look at. So we did, and then rolled on the floor laughing at some of them. Some of them were for other buildings owned by the developer, or his other businesses. Quite a few in fact.

One was even for light bulbs (nearly $6,000 worth of the things) for the new IBM office in Petone.

Talk about adding insult to injury – we have to be prepared to take IBM to court, and now we are being asked to pay for their damn light bulbs!!!

I don’t fippin’ well think so.

The upshot of me being picky, and a pain in the arse, is that this portion of the “special levy” we were being asked to stump up for went down by about $37,000.

I’m still not happy with some of the expenses being claimed, and we have voted for someone independent to check them out (with the best will in the world I am not qualified to go further with it than I already have). The saving to us personally is still a few hundred dollars – not to be sneezed at – an independent check could save us even more.  And although it was a bit awkward and time consuming – I don’t think it hurts for people to be made aware that I will indeed check and make sure that what I’m being asked to pay for is legitimate and fair.

In the past 2 months we have actually claimed back about $60 in fees that we have been overcharged by various companies. That might not sound like a lot – but right now every little helps.

You may not save $37,000 every week by spotting mistakes in bills – but you won’t save anything if you never check.

Related posts:

  1. You don’t save when you have debts to pay.
  2. Check your Vodafone Bills, especially if you have an iPhone!
  3. The face of the “recession”: check how much you are spending!
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Comments

4 Comments on Would you check a bill to save $5? $500 or $37,000

  1. Deborah on Tue, 21st Dec 2010 4:54 pm

    2. “One was even for light bulbs (nearly $6,000 worth of the things) for the new IBM office in Petone.”

    ROTFL Oh the irony ;)

  2. Avalon on Tue, 21st Dec 2010 6:36 pm

    3. Lol – there was a certain amount of ” I CANNOT believe they just did that” type comments in the house. In fact my entry in the spreadsheet for that item just says ROFL – try again!

    :) A sense of humour is invaluable on occasions like this!

  3. Adam Cockburn on Tue, 21st Dec 2010 10:08 pm

    4. which building helen?
    Adam

  4. Avalon on Wed, 22nd Dec 2010 11:11 am

    5. Hi Adam,

    Respectfully – I don’t think it’s important which building this is. The post is about the importance of checking bills, receipts and balancing statements, and making sure you are not overcharged and that you know where your money is going.

    Which is something I bang on about quite a bit :)

    Hxx

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