Readers are telling me about card games that retailers are playing, such as not honouring a gift card because of a rule that can’t be broken or a policy never disclosed to the consumer.

Here are two stories below, where Sears and Petro Canada reversed their refusals once I called them on it. Also, here are two complaints, not yet resolved, about loyalty programs denying points or rewards to members.

I recently wrote about Neoset, a Toronto furniture chain that sold custom-made furniture from Greece and Quebec. Customers were given endless excuses for why their orders hadn’t arrived. Then, one day, the stores were shuttered and the phone lines went dead.

In my column, I said Visa and MasterCard could provide refunds when items were paid for and not delivered. Both have policies that ensure customers are made whole in such cases.

Then, I started getting complaints that people were being denied refunds. Their credit card issuers said they were out of luck because they had a limited window of only 60 or 90 days after payment to get their money back.

This is not true. The financial institutions that issue credit cards are getting the facts wrong. They’re misinterpreting the generous refund policies designed to help consumers caught in a retail crunch.

So, let’s get the story straight. Here’s a quote from Julie Wilson, a spokeswoman for MasterCard Canada, and reiterated by Amy Cole, a spokeswoman for Visa Canada:

MasterCard provides its card issuers with 120 days from the latest anticipated delivery date to dispute a charge. Simply put, it is non-receipt of merchandise.

Similar to the airlines, if a merchant goes out of business, and you have used your MasterCard credit card, then you are covered on any services or products not received. That includes deposits.

So if you have purchased a wedding gift using a registry, and the goods were never received, then your card-issuing financial institution would have 120 days from the date that you were told it would be delivered to dispute the charge.

Let’s say I bought something on April 3, 2009 and the merchant tells me that I will have it in my hands on Oct. 2, 2009. The 120 days starts Oct. 2, 2009.

It’s important to keep receipts and records of any communication about delivery dates. Then, if your credit card issuer says no, keep fighting up the chain. Go tol the head office of Visa or MasterCard for confirmation that a refund is allowed.

I predict we’ll see more cases of business failure and non-delivery of orders before this recesssion ends. If credit cards want to maintain their reputation as being more secure than cash, they had better train their issuers to tell the truth about their refund policies.

Maybe you get the unwanted product even if you don’t agree. By the time you realize you’re paying for it, you’re too late to cancel.

Insurance is one of those products that is pushed heavily, especially as an add-on to another sale. See the complaints below about unwanted travel health insurance for a cruise and unwanted medical insurance for furniture financing.

Alarm systems are a product pushed by door to door sellers, who make people feel they have to get rid of their hard-wired systems and buy a wireless system. This is now arousing consumer alarms.

Door to door sales recently led to the shooting of a mentally challenged man by Ontario Provincial Police. He had gotten into a fight with an aggressive salesman of water heaters, resulting in the call to police.

For consumers, the best strategy is to send salespeople away when they come to your door. And, of course, to check every document you get to make sure you aren’t being charged for unauthorized and unsolicited goods and services.

Some comments ended up in my blog post a few weeks ago, but more are coming in. It seems everyone has an opinion on how to save energy. It’s a subject that makes readers get really get hot under the collar.

Let’s pay tribute to Dan, a homeowner who shared his experience with others and came up with than 500 tips for saving energy, of which 275 cost absolutely nothing to do. You can find his tips broken down into subcategories here.

“Our objective is in part to remind people that they don’t need to wait for government handouts to reduce their household utility bills at any time of the year, as well as provide a quick list that people can access whenever they want at no cost,” he says. “After all, most of the items on the list were submitted to us free of charge.”

Let’s also give a shout to Jim Davidson’s book, which gave lots of advice about how to make your car go further before filling up the gas tank. Some of his 75 tips made people exceed the speed limit with indignation.

It’s clear that both big communications companies have lots of critics. It’s clear that both have problems managing their customer service.

Today, Rogers and Bell are waging a price war, forcing customers to think twice about which company to use for which part of their telecom needs. I believe you should use their feud to your own advantage.

Bargain for the best deals you can get. Find the retention or loyalty departments, who have the power to give you incentives to make you stay. Threaten to leave if you can’t get what you want. Get proof of the great prices you were offered, since the billing department often has other ideas.

Here are some of the comments I’ve been getting about the whole Bell vs Rogers vs others debate. My Star column last week attracted more than 60 comments. We all have an opinion, right? So, let’s hear it.

The chair, Don Stewart, heads a life insurance company. The vice-chair is with BMO Nesbitt Burns, an investment dealer. Only two of the 11 others named to the task force can be called consumer advocates, Pat Foran of CTV and Laurie Campbell of Credit Canada.

Makes me wonder what will come out of this exercise. There’s a consensus that Canada needs to teach children about money management when they’re in school. That’s helpful, but not enough.

Financial literacy is being watered down and becoming a motherhood issue, one that all the big institutions can support. It’s about when to introduce courses in schools and how to teach compound interest to children when they’re old enough to understand it.

After thinking about what this idea really means and debating it with trusted colleagues, I have a few points to make.

– People only learn when they’re ready to learn, when they find a topic interesting or they have to make imminent decisions. That teachable moment often comes later in life than high school.

— There’s been a huge shift in risk from governments and employers to citizens. Decent pensions are becoming obsolete (except for civil servants). Medicare covers only the basics and any extras have to be paid for by private insurance. You have to cover the costs if you or a family member become ill and unable to work. You have to cover the cost of children’s post-secondary education.

– Governments have pulled back the safety net and created this “risk shift” to individuals, while not providing the educational supports that people need to make informed decisions.

To me, financial literacy is not just about distributing plain-language educational materials. It’s also about adopting new attitudes.

–One, you can’t delegate your money decisions to anyone else (an adviser, a friend, a spouse). You have to look after your own finances or face adverse consequences.

–Two, you can’t trust someone paid to sell products to have your best interests at heart. And in Canada, most financial advisers don’t have a fiduciary duty (a requirement to put the client’s interests first).

– Three, you can’t be an optimist where your money is concerned. Always ask about the worst case scenario when presented with a set of financial projections.

– Four, life has a habit of being unpredictable and often hurtful. So plan accordingly. Save as much as you can in case you lose your job. Buy insurance in case you’re sick or you die, leaving your family without income. But make sure you get the right advice and don’t enrich the pushers of high-priced and inadequate savings and insurance products.

–Five, don’t count on anyone to bail you out of a financial jam. The government or your employer may not give you a decent standard of living when you retire. Your parents may not leave you money in their will. Your house may not be worth more than you paid for it. Assume the worst and be prepared for bad stuff, even if it never happens.

–Six, don’t be too starry-eyed about your finances when love is involved. There’s a good chance your marriage or common-law partnership won’t last, so protect yourself. And remember that having children is a huge expense and shouldn’t be undertaken lightly. People with fewer kids often do better in life.

I hope that Canada’s financial literacy strategy is broad enough to encompass such points. I’m willing to give this task force a chance to prove itself. But the fact that the final report won’t come out until the fall of 2010 causes concern. How long will we have to wait to see any results?

Our group is part of the Canadian Moneysavers network of share clubs. This means we don’t invest money together, but talk about how to do it.

We started last September and meet monthly at a Toronto community centre. This week, we invited Gaelen Morphet of CIBC Global Asset management to talk about how she picks stocks as a value investor.

Her presentation was terrific, both practical and insightful. She talked about how the stock market may not snap back as expected, since so many companies are putting out big equity issues and diluting their shares. TransCanada Corp. had just come out that day with a $1.6 billion common share offering.

Some group members are participating in a stock simulator contest at Investopedia. The leader has made his fictional $1 million stash grow to $1.3 million in just a few months. That’s impressive. (I can say that because I’m not in the game yet.)

Investing is an essential life skill, in my view. You need to make your money grow beyond the limited returns that savings products can provide over a long period. And you can’t hand over authority to others unless you understand how investments work.

Illiterate investors are easy prey for rogue advisers. Trusting salespeople to put your interests ahead of their own just leads to disappointment.

We’ve talked about specific stocks, from large (Coca-Cola) to small (Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers). We’ve talked about exchange-traded funds and dividend reinvestment plans and we’ve compared tax-free savings accounts.

We even have a mission statement:

We are committed to sharing information among all members, with the goal of working towards preserving capital and increasing the after-tax returns of our individual portfolios.

We strive to strengthen our understanding of investing and gain hands-on
experience in analyzing stocks and interpreting financial statements.

It sounds serious, but it’s also fun. Just look at our name (not my choice, but voted on by the group). It’s Ellen Degenerates Share Club.

It didn’t take me long to realize this leveraged product was for day traders only. After a short-lived foray, I stayed away.

FAIR Canada, a new group that speaks for investors, doesn’t want to see leveraged ETFs sold to the buy and hold crowd. Check out its its investor alert, which is very readable.

The advocacy group is asking securities regulators to beef up prospectus disclosure. (My disclosure: I’m on the board of FAIR.)

Now the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada has put out its own warning to investment dealers, as has a U.S. financial regulator.

Here’s what the leveraged ETF issuers are not telling investors strongly enough:

Most leveraged and inverse ETFs “reset” daily, meaning that they are designed to achieve their stated objectives on a daily basis. Due to the effect of compounding, their performance over longer periods of time can differ significantly from the performance (or inverse of the performance) of their underlying index or benchmark over longer periods of time.

For example, a Canadian ETF that seeks to deliver twice the daily return of the COMEX Gold Bullion Index fell 5 per cent between Jan. 22, 2008 and May 29, 2009. However, its inverse fund (twice the inverse daily return of the index) fell 38 per cent in the same time period. The underlying COMEX Gold Bullion Index increased by 6 per cent during this period.

I’m happy to see FAIR’s call for investor protection echoed by Canadian and U.S. regulators. I’m also relieved to see IIROC tell advisers that prospectus disclosure, even if beefed up, doesn’t go far enough.

Dealer Members are further reminded that providing risk disclosure in a prospectus or product description does not cure otherwise deficient disclosure in sales material, even if the sales material is accompanied or preceded by the prospectus or product description.

Since I pay attention to my online account, I sold my leveraged inverse ETF before losing much money. But not all investors are self-directed.

Some people may buy — and hold — these products because of a recommendation by a trusted adviser. Let’s hope they stay away once the risks are explained to them..

Every other day (every other day), every other day
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever monday comes, but whenever monday comes
A-you can find me cryin all of the time

On Monday, I’m crying after reading the heartbreaking or horrifying stories sent to me… or the insults from people who think I’m completely wrong… or the compliments from those who find help with formerly intractable problems.

Even those who don’t remember the Mamas and Papas and their 1966 hit song may find Mondays hard to take.

Welcome to my Monday mailbag and welcome to my world.

This may be a good time to lock in a historically low rate, assuming you can get out of an existing mortgage without a big penalty.

“The good news is that we’re still just 0.2 per cent above the lowest fixed rates in history,” said the Canadian Mortgage Trends blog, which called the turning point a couple of weeks ago and confirmed it this week.

“Moreover, if you want to lock in near the bottom, there are still some lenders who haven’t raised yet.”

Last weekend, I also got a warning from the Canadian Mortgage Rate Search Engine.

“Big fan of your mortgage articles. We just noticed that rates are slowly starting to climb up and we believe that it is important for your readers to know. We contacted major banks and confirmed the possibility of rate hike next week.”

I’m still getting complaints about unexpectedly large penalties, but I’m also hearing from people who refinanced without pain and saved money. It’s worth exploring if your mortgage will be coming due in the next year to 18 months and you fear that rates will be back above 5 per cent for five years.

Since I can’t handle all the complaints I get, I was interested to hear from someone who’s doing it as a fee-for-service business. Jane Steele Moore of Complaints Are Us in Toronto charges $50 for the first hour and $25 an hour after that.

The story of how she helped someone resolve a problem with overdraft protection at a big bank is posted below.