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My bank has an option to send me a notification every time I'm charged for something. I've noticed several bills that were higher than they should have been "due to a technical error". I'm certain some companies rely on people not checking and randomly add "errors".

Notably there's no way (known to me) that you can have direct debits sent as requests that aren't automatically paid. I think that would put consumers on an equal footing with businesses though, which is obviously bad for the economy.

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Wasn’t aware about charge notifications. Looks like my bank supports that - thanks for the info!

> My bank has an option to send me a notification every time I'm charged for something.

Wait, your bank doesn't do that by default? I've always assumed it's default behavior of most banks.

It's normally an option in my experience. I have mine set for charges over $100. I don't want a notification every time I buy gas (I do check my statements every month though).

What is the harm in being notified when you buy gas? It doesn’t hurt anything, and I DO want to be notified if someone else buys gas on my card!

The discussion started as a way to avoid forgetting to cancel subscriptions or to catch subscription price increases; if you are setting your limit to $100, you aren’t going to be seeing charges for almost all your subscriptions.

I have my minimum set to $0, so I see all the charges. Helpful reminder when I see a $8 charge for something I forgot to cancel.

Alert fatigue. Most people, if they get an alert for every single purchase they make, will learn to ignore the alerts as they are useless 99% of the time. Then when an alert comes through that would be useful, they won't see that either.

Anyone who has had the misfortune to work on monitoring systems knows the very fine line you have to walk when choosing what alerts to send. Too few, or too many, and the system becomes useless.

As I said, I have my alert set to $0 and it really hasn’t caused fatigue. For one thing, when it is something i just purchased, the alert is basically just a confirmation that the purchase went through. I close it immediately and move on.

If I get an alert and I didn’t buy anything, it makes me think about it. Often times it just reminds me of a subscription I have, and I take the moment the think if I still need it or not. If I start feeling like I am getting a lot of that kind of alert, I need to reevaluate the number of subscriptions I have.

If I get an alert and I don’t immediately recognize the source (the alert will say the amount and who it is charged to), it certainly makes me pause and try to figure out what it is, and that has not been “alert fatigued” away from me even after 10+ years of these alerts.

Basically, if I get an alert when I didn’t literally JUST make a purchase, it is worth looking into.

I dont think it causes alert fatigue; I am not getting a bunch of false alerts throughout my day, because I shouldn’t be having random charges appear if I am not actively buying something.

You had to opt in for my bank, and choose a minimum amount to be notified for. I chose $0, so I get notified for everything.

If it's random surely you'd get a discount sometimes!

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