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First off let me preface this by saying it's not so much the 5 dollars but the principle of the matter.
So here goes the wall of text:
3 years ago I was approached by a car salesman here on base trying to sell me a car. I said "Why do I want a 2008 car when I'm going to be in japan for another 3 years?"
He said "oh, well we have this program that's like a savings account, we'll give you 7% interest up to 500 dollars on the money you put in." After doing the math I realized that if I put in around 400 dollars a month for the next 3 years I'd have well over 10,000 dollars saved up, more than enough for a brand new car. Now I don't have a lot of money and the thought of taking out a loan frightens me so I decided to agree and start this "savings account" thing so I could buy a car at the end of my time here in Japan.
Well flash forward to the present day and the guy calls me up asking to look over what kinda car I want. Well I go to the office and pick out a Ford Mustang (my dream car) I fully customize this thing and next year when I get back to the US it is gonna be sweet! Best part is that it will be fully paid off meaning no loans whatsoever. Or so I thought. It was a couple thousand over my price range. Well I figured I'd have to take out a loan if I wanted the car, but I also thought that if I increased my payments to my "savings account" with them that I could save up another 1000 dollars. This would mean a smaller loan. Remember I'm kinda scared of big loans.
So I go ahead and decide to increase my payments to this "savings account" by 100 dollars per month.
Then last week I get a letter from them saying that I paid an extra 95 dollars what should they do with it... I'm like uh I sent you 100 dollars extra not 95. And then they are like ya we know but we kept 5 dollars as a service fee to send you the letter in the mail. I'm like WTF of course I wanted to increase my allotment to you, why did you spend 5 dollars and send me the stupid letter.
Then I was like give me my 5 dollars back because you shouldn't have sent me that letter. Then they are like it's standard procedure and you signed a contract saying that we can charge you money for this. They even sent me a picture of the contract I supposedly signed (though my signature wasn't on that paper)
So then I tried to call them because Email just wasn't working and guess what, first time I get the stupid music saying "your call is important to us please stay on the line..." you know typical phone bs crap. but after 15 minutes it hangs up on me. So I try again, same thing 15 minutes and I get auto disconnected, then I try a 3rd time and same thing.
I sent them another email which they still haven't replied to me. So, I opened up my contract and noticed that I can get a full refund (hopefully including this stupid 5 dollars) Which I am very tempted to do. So rather than them sell me a car worth over 10,000 dollars they are going to lose a customer over a stupid 5 dollar fee.
Oh last note, if I don't reply formally to that letter they sent then according to the letter they will keep sending me more letters charging me more money. The letter didn't specify how much the future letters would cost but it's pretty stupid.
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