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Saturday, February 16, 2008

My love affair with Rhapsody may be coming to an end

Ok, so I've never had a terribly good financial head. Let's face it; I'm great at anything book-smarts related and absolutely lousy at anything street-smarts related. I suck at the non-theoretical. But at least I'm willing to admit it.

So, of course, as part of that whole growing up and turning into an adult thing, I've suddenly decided to learn how to deal with checking and savings and IRAs and 401s (and I thought they were jeans) and so on. I sometimes wonder if there're folks whose sole job is to sit in a back room trying to find a way to make it even harder to balance a checkbook (or three) while making it seem easier.

Now, I've been with my bank for a while, but recently (read a couple years ago) opened a credit union acct so I could get away from the bank because their favorite sport seems to be finding new ways to charge people like me for being money stupid. And I think they may have gotten more of my money over the years than I have. No blame here--though I am bitter and feel like blaming, I must take and own my part in this mess. I am a money moron.

Anyhow, I ended up sometimes charging one account for a recurring cost and sometimes another--depending on where the money was, of course. And so it was with Rhapsody. I've been a member of Rhapsody since its inception. I pay monthly, though I used to pay quarterly. I loved the access to so much music. Especially since I am a fan of world music (and especially Israeli music) and could get it there. I was proud to not buy into Apple's i-Tunes (has anyone but me noticed that Mac's making the same proprietary mistakes IBM made that got it out of the computer market fast?). I even recommended it lovingly to friends.

And then I decided to learn how to balance a checkbook. And found out they've been over- and double- charging me, fo MONTHS.

So I call. Henry tells me he has no record of his company cheating me out of hundreds of dollars. Gosh, can I call my bank and see if they can tell me what's up? I did. They did. We're in the process of fixing it. But in the process of gathering my proof, so my bank will believe me, I've discovered that Rhapsody has been screwing around with me on the credit union side, too! They've charged me on that account every single month they charged on the bank account. Hmmm....problem? Hell yeah!

So, of course, I will begin by calling Rhapsody again on Monday, after I talk again with my bank and make sure they're ok with that. But I'm going to have a really tough time being civil about it--because I don't believe the person hired to answer the phone for a company deserves my ire just because his or her company screwed up. I'm also going to have a tough time finding a new music service, but really, how do you stay with a music service that believes it can just take your money when it feels like it?

I know I can't.

Bye bye (or if it makes it easier for y'all to read; buy buy) Rhapsody!

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