The Grown-Up Life: Getting My Bank Fees Waived

So earlier this week I did a thing that made me feel pretty grown up, so I thought I’d share it with you.

Last weekend, I put the finishing touches on my website for when I graduate (See? So grown up!) and I needed to buy a domain name. I decided on http://www.littleharpontheprairie.com. Side note – if you click on that link it will help me rank higher on Google searches :)

So anyway, I tried to purchase the domain, and the transaction failed. I got a message saying that I was refunded. I decided to try again, to see if it was a one-time thing. Still failed. I decided to wait until Monday, when finally it worked.

Fast forward to Thursday, when I get an email from PayPal saying there were insufficient funds in my bank account. My heart stops. What? I log into online banking to see that those two first failed charges were processed and the refunds didn’t come in time, so I was looking at two NSF charges of $45 each. Yikes! My PayPal has always automatically paid with my credit card, not my chequing account, so I was shocked and upset that this happened.

Cue an hour of being really upset and feeling really, really dumb. “Isn’t there any way to fix this?” I cried. So naturally, I Googled it. Turns out if you just phone your bank and ask, they’ll waive a fee for you. I did just that and got one of my $45 charges removed. They could only remove one, they said, and maybe if I was a pushier person I could have gotten the other one removed too, but I was just happy that I got anything at all.

I’m still out $45 dollars, but that’s a lot better than $90! And I felt pretty smart that I figured out how to do that, so my ego was soothed too. The main lesson I’ve learned here, though, is that I should always double check my payment method when using PayPal!