Fought a $12 monthly "convenience fee" on my insurance for 3 calls and finally won with one question
Everyone says you can't beat the junk fees these companies tack on, but I got mine refunded back 14 months after I asked the rep to read me the exact line in my policy that allows it and she couldn't. Took about 20 minutes total and I got $168 back, your mileage may vary depending on your state. Has anyone else gotten a fee reversed just by making them point to the fine print?
The fine print part is where people get tripped up, because a lot of these fees don't actually show up in your policy at all. They get added through a separate fee schedule or an amendment the company sends later, so the rep can't point to a line in the policy because it's not there. I ran into this with a phone bill where the "regulatory cost recovery" thing was buried in a terms update email from two years back, not the contract itself. Asking for the line still works, just ask them to send you the doc in writing instead of reading it over the phone. Once you make them put it in an email they usually drop the fee, because nobody wants to write down a made up charge lol.