The Amazon Scam

As the world's largest online retailer, Amazon probably does 99% of its business over the internet. But if you wanted to call them, well, you could fall victim to a scam. That's right, calling Amazon has become the latest way con artists are getting your private financial information so they can steal your identity.

Today host Rob West explains how it's done and you can avoid it. Then we're going to be taking your calls at 800-525-7000. Let me give that number one more time, 800-525-7000. Incidentally, I'm Rich Rozzle filling in today for Steve Moore, not stealing his identity though.

We're talking about the Amazon scam. That's today on MoneyWise Live. And Rob, good to be with you today. Steve, off for a few days of vacation, which is always well deserved.

It sure is Rich, but it's great to have you in the seat. Looking forward to sharing the mic with you today. Well, I appreciate that.

And I know you and Mark Biller did a lovely job yesterday, so sorry. Yeah, well, we're going to kind of find different ways to test your abilities of being host, co-host and expert here on MoneyWise. You know, this scam though, that we're talking about, I was reading up on this and it's especially devious because it's designed to get your guard down.

Wouldn't you agree? I certainly would, Rich, because it goes right to the heart of one of the safeguards we talk about a lot on this program actually, and that is not trusting your private financial information to someone or something that initiates the contact. You know, we've said many times that you can only trust the other party if you're the one making contact, but now it seems the scammers have found a way around that barrier. Yeah, explain how this works now because this is unusual.

It really is. Like most online retailers, Amazon prides itself with being able to handle your customer service needs online. You can log into your account and do just about anything you want to do, buy things, return an item, change your account status, you name it. But occasionally someone may want to actually speak to someone at Amazon. Imagine that. And that's where the trouble starts. Do you know the number by heart?

Probably not. So what do you do? Well, you Google it. Something like Amazon customer service phone number would probably fit the bill. But when you do that, fake websites are actually appearing in Google and giving bogus phone numbers. So now what happens if I need to call customer service and I dial one of those fake numbers? Yeah, well, let's say you're calling because you want to cancel your Amazon Prime membership, perhaps.

So your guard is down because you know you're initiating the conversation. You're not clicking a link in an email. You've dialed the number yourself, but you've actually called a scam artist with a bogus number. A man answers saying online support and you tell him you want to cancel your membership. He of course then follows up by asking for your name and phone number and then tells you to enter support.me into a Google search bar. Well, when you do, a web form will appear asking you to fill in your information, some of it financial information. Now if you fall for it, Rich, as you know, you've now given them what they need to steal your identity.

Okay, but let's be fair here. What if I don't fall for it? Now the web page with the form appears and I notice it's not the official Amazon website and so I refuse.

Is that pretty much the end of it? Well, you'd think so, but the scam artist isn't ready to give up just yet. If you refuse, he'll say there's another way to resolve the problem and cancel your Prime membership.

And here's where they revert back to their usual bag of tricks. They'll tell you to sign into your Amazon account, search for Google Play card, select a $100 gift card, sound familiar, and then click the buy button. The next step is a bit unclear, but you'd probably be told to sign the card over to an entity that might have the word Amazon somewhere in its name, but would of course be the scammers account.

Now seriously though, why in the world would anybody do that? If I want to cancel, why am I going to pay them $100? Yeah, well, because you're told that the virtual transaction won't really go through and it's necessary to generate a code that he needs to process your cancellation. Obviously, most people won't fall for this, but some do, unfortunately. So even if they don't get your financial information, sometimes they end up with a $100 payday.

Wow. Okay, well so what can we do to protect ourselves from this latest scam? Well first, Rich, keep in mind this type of scam could work with any online retailer and Amazon customers aren't the only ones being targeted.

To avoid falling victim to this latest scheme, here's what you want to do. Make sure you always visit the retailer's official website and then click the contact us link. Don't just Google for a retailer's contact page. A better option is to conduct your business online, and again only at the retailer's official website. A legitimate retailer will not ask for your credit card information for anything other than buying one of their products, never to cancel an account. Also, gift cards have obviously become a hallmark of all types of scams, so if someone tells you to buy one in order to complete some action like canceling a membership, just hang up or close the webpage if you're online and never, never, never click on a link in an email, that's the phishing scam.

Well, that's great, great information and our official number, the real one, 800-525-7000. God cares a great deal more about our money than most of us imagine. In fact, Jesus says more about our use of money and possessions than about anything else, including both heaven and hell. In managing God's money, author Randy Alcorn breaks it all down in a simple, easy to follow format that makes it the perfect reference tool if you're interested in gaining a solid biblical understanding of money, possessions and eternity. Managing God's money is available when you click the store button at MoneyWiseLive.org.

If you have money in a retirement account or just a general investing account, you know the stock market can sometimes be like a rollercoaster, but it is possible to enjoy both profit and peace of mind in investing no matter what's happening in the market. You can see a short video webinar on that topic at SoundMindInvesting.org. Since 1990, Sound Mind Investing has sought to offer financial wisdom for living well.

SoundMindInvesting.org. All that glitters is in gold. Scams are nothing new. In days gone by, con men would cover a brass ring with a thin layer of gold. He'd then go into a crowd, drop it where it might be seen, and when someone saw it and went to pick it up, the con artist would reach for it too. He'd then suggest, we could split the ring between us, unless you want to keep it, just by my arm. It seemed like great value for a gold ring, but the ring was actually a fawny, where we probably get the word fawny. A lot of people today are reaching for something that will give them a sense of security, and they're not necessarily bad things. But when they seem to have everything, they can actually feel a bit taken because all that glitters isn't gold. Jesus said he came so that you could have life the way God intended.

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The Bible has 2,350 verses dealing with money and possessions, and Rob West counts them all each night to help them fall asleep. But in the meantime, we're going to do our best to help you apply all of those verses to your life and finances, and if we can help you today, please give us a call. Our number, open now, we've got several lines open, 800-525-7000. Again 800-525-7000 if you'd like to join us today on Money Wise Live. By the way, Rob, we were talking about this new Amazon scam that's out there, our Facebook question of the day, which is quite often tied to our opening topic, said, if you know someone who's been the victim of a scam artist, what have you learned from their experience? And if you'd like to participate, go to our Facebook page, you'll find us at Money Wise Media. Cole did respond, he said he's learned don't trust everything on Craigslist.

I think we've all learned that probably by now. He said if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, but we'd love to hear of your experiences as well. That's exactly right, and we appreciate you weighing in.

We do typically have a question of the day on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. Just look for Money Wise Live or Money Wise Media and weigh in. You can also do that in our brand new Money Wise app. Not only is it what we believe to be the very best digital envelope system out there, and we all need a digital envelope system, right? That's how you're going to track the flow of money coming in and out, connect to all of your accounts, savings and checking.

And if you use a credit card to pay it off every month, download those transactions and get your budget set. It's all there, and we've solved for all of the things that I've found over the years the other apps don't do. So we've built those in. But here's the other piece is the Money Wise community is there as well. Just two weeks ago, we launched our new community tab, and it's a way you can get in there and interact with other Money Wise listeners, ask questions. I'm in there periodically and responding to many of your questions.

You can share ideas with each other. It's the community tab. And then on the Discover tab, you can listen to this broadcast.

You can even listen to archives as well. And by the way, you can search for a Certified Kingdom Advisor. It's all there in the Money Wise app. Go to your Apple App Store or your Google Play Store and search for Money Wise Biblical Finance and download it today. Wow, what a deal. And it's free.

You can go and get it and try it out and see what you like. Let me give our number once again. 1-800-525-7000. And Heather is on the line with us today calling from Atlanta, Georgia.

Heather, what's going on with you and how can we be of help? Yes, I recently took out an auto loan, and the auto loan has a very high interest rate because my credit wasn't so great. I'm trying to work on my credit not charging anything, not taking out more loans, paying all my bills on time. About how long would it take me to get my credit good enough and at what point and where would I go to find an auto loan with a much lower interest rate?

Yes. Well, Heather, it's a great question and I certainly know that that can be frustrating and feel like it's taking forever to see that credit score improve. Generally speaking, and that's all it is because it is going to really come down to a number of factors, but generally speaking, it takes you at least a year to recover from bad credit, assuming you do most everything right. But it does depend on your starting point, the length of your credit history, and the moves you're going to make.

But if you make mistakes along the way, it's going to of course take longer. So the key is to make sure you're an on-time payer with all of your active accounts. We're going to want to work to get those balances paid off in full eventually, but certainly below the 30% debt to limit ratio. Meaning if you have a limit of $10,000 on an account, you want to make sure you don't owe more than $3,000 on that account. And that's a ratio that they look for.

Obviously, a number of other factors. What types of accounts do you have? How long is your credit history? All of these things are going to go into determining what that ultimate score is.

Obviously, if there's any judgments on there or a bankruptcy, as those get older and older, they will have less impact on you. So the key is A. Time. B. Be an on-time payer.

C. Try to lean into some of these other things that I'm mentioning in terms of getting your credit limits or balances down and making sure you have the right types of credit. Does that all make sense though to you? Yes, it does. Thank you very much. You are very welcome.

We appreciate your time. By the way, Heather, I was just looking on bankrate.com, which is a website we often refer people to, and just to let you know how much your score might improve. I don't know what your score is right now, but if it's down below 600, yeah, you could be paying on a new car loan close to 12%, maybe around 18% if you're buying a used car. But as you move up for every 50 to 100 points improvement you get there, the rate drops down to about 7.5%, 4.5%.

If you've got a super great score and that would be over 780, a new car loan today could be 3.65%, 4.29% for a used car. So there is a lot to gain from working on improving this, and I don't think it'll be too long before you'll find folks willing to give you a much better loan than what you're looking at now. But we appreciate your call. Thanks so very much.

And let's get to Fortville, Indiana. Susie, hi, welcome to MoneyWise Live. How can we be of help? Well, I just caught the beginning of your program where you were talking about the Amazon scam, and I'm curious because I do use Amazon Prime, and recently I got an alert that came through when I tried to go, actually I was just trying to get on my Gmail, and this alert sign came up that said fraud alert. Yeah, I think we lost you there for a second, but go right ahead. Continue with your question. Okay, I'm out in the country right now heading toward a barn. I hope I have coverage here.

Well, we'll give it one more shot, and then if we lose you, I'll weigh in on what I've heard thus far. Okay, I was just curious if this alert that I keep getting every time I try to go to my Gmail, this alert comes up and said something about tracking your packages, and it said fraud alert, something about leave this page immediately if you want to, blah, blah, blah, and then I didn't even read to the bottom of it because I thought anytime I see fraud alert, I immediately get out of it, but then I couldn't get to my email without seeing this fraud alert page, so I finally figured out if I take my cursor and just erase, delete everything in the search engine, then I can go to my Gmail and call up my mail, but it's concerning to me because every time I get on to my search engine, that comes up. Interesting. Well, so many of these web browsers now have security features built in where they look for spoofing type websites where they're trying to impersonate a legitimate vendor or company, and they're seeing that the URL for that particular organization doesn't match what it should or it's not coming from a secure web page, any number of things that will alert it, and then it will pass that information on to you. If this is an ongoing issue, you may want to seek the help from somebody who can check it out, but I think the bottom line here is, as we talked about, if you're ever trying to contact Amazon over the phone, make sure you go to their website, Amazon.com, and click contact us as opposed to Googling it, and then just be on your guard about any unsolicited messages. Amazon will never ask you to provide personal sensitive information like social security, tax ID, bank account numbers, credit card information, any of that through a form. Unless you're buying something, they won't ask you to make a payment outside of the website, they won't ask you for remote access to your advice, and if you receive an email from somebody that perhaps looks like them asking you to log in, don't do that. Go directly to the website and initiate that secure connection yourself. So we've just got to be on our guard, we've got to take the extra step not just to automatically respond to things that are in front of us, go through the company's official website for everything so we can keep ourselves protected from these scams, which by the way are becoming more and more frequent and more sophisticated it seems, Rich, all the time.

Yeah, indeed they are. Susie, we appreciate that. A couple other thoughts real quick though before you go. One would be, it's possible that you've got some malware on your computer, I mean we're not IT guys, but you can download programs like Malwarebytes and there are several others that are free of charge and can do a quick scan of your system and help you get rid of a problem. If you have further problems and this keeps popping up, it's always worth a call, I hate to say that because it's hard to get customer service, but it's always worth a call to your internet service provider and they may be able to offer some help as well, but we do appreciate your call and hope you can get that sorted out. Our number once again on MoneyWise Live, 1-800-525-7000. Of course, you can also connect with us by email. That address is questions at moneywise.org. Again, 800-525-7000 or questions at moneywise.org. I'm Rich Roslin for Steve Moore. Rob West is our host.

We'll be back with your calls after this. Buying a home is the largest, most nerve-wracking purchase most of us ever make. It doesn't help that you're entering a maze of unfamiliar words and confusing options that can leave you intimidated, frustrated and afraid you've been taken advantage of. Navigating the Mortgage Maze by Dale Vermilion helps you clear up the confusion, unrack your nerves and make the best mortgage decisions possible with confidence.

Navigating the Mortgage Maze, available when you click the store button at moneywiselive.org. Hebrews 4-12 says, For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. Here's Beth Moore with a quick word. Matthew 22, 1-14. Jesus spoke to them again in parable saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Verse 4. Then he sent some more servants and said, Tell those who have been invited that I prepared my dinner.

My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet. So even in his mercy goes back and says, Maybe you didn't understand how wonderful a party it's going to be because they refused to come.

So it gets issued a second time. Perhaps you have no idea how wonderful this wedding banquet is going to be. So maybe if I tell you, you will really want to come. And it says then in verse five, But they paid no attention and went off one to his field and another to his business.

I just I just want you to picture that with me because it is such a picture. In verse five, when it says paid no attention, the new American commentary says more literally they didn't care. That's such a statement of the world we live in today that it's not that so many people that surround us are just thoroughly against the whole idea of God and his son Christ. They're just busy. I don't care. I mean, some really have something against it. But for a whole lot, they're just busy. They're too much too busy to go to this wedding banquet. Beth is dedicated to encouraging people to come to know and love Jesus Christ through the study of Scripture.

Why wait? Click online today. Pick a podcast or television teaching or both. Just visit Bethmore.org. That's Bethmore.org or download the Living Life app.

Glad you could join us for A Quick Word with Beth Moore. Most couples can't talk about money, yet most money books expect them to. But how can you create a budget or pay down debt if you can't even talk about spending or saving with your mate? If you get tense about money or just plain avoid money conversations altogether, Thriving in Love and Money by Shanti and Jeff Feldhahn is for you. And it's yours free when you donate $25 or more to MoneyWiseLive.org.

Thriving in Love and Money for a better relationship, not just a better budget. Welcome back. You're listening to MoneyWise Live, the radio outreach of MoneyWise Media. Our host, as always, is Rob West. Steve Moore normally sits in his seat. I'm Rich Rozzle, filling in as best I can and trying to steal his identity since we have been talking about that whole program.

So far, I've ordered some really nice things off of Amazon, but I don't know whether he's going to get the bill for it or not. Well, and the height just gives it away, Rich, every time. The height and the facial hair, but that's a whole other issue, yes. Actually, you don't know if this is really me. I could have assumed someone else's face too in the process.

Well, that's true. Well, let's get back to some calls, what I think we do better, and that's at 800-525-7000. Cindy is calling us today from Cleveland, Ohio. Hi, Cindy.

Welcome to MoneyWise Live. Hi. How are you today? We're doing great. Thanks for calling. Good.

A quick question. My son is divorced, and he's trying to rebuild his credit. And just yesterday, he told me that he got involved with some company that is charging $70 a month to get the negative things off his credit report. And I'm just wondering if that's a scam. Is it something that he could possibly do himself? Absolutely.

You're on the right track there, Cindy. It may or may not be a scam, but the bottom line is it's completely unnecessary. These companies can't do anything that your son can't do himself. Rebuilding credit is not something that's done in kind of a secret fashion.

It's really all in plain English in terms of the steps, and it has to do with really being an on-time payer, managing your credit wisely and doing that for a long period of time. If he's got some negative information out there, just about the only thing he can do is challenge it if it's inaccurate because the Fair Credit Reporting Act gives him the ability if there's inaccurate negative information on the report to challenge it. It has to be either verified or deleted. But if it is in fact accurate, even if it's negative, no company can get it removed.

The whole reason that it's there is it's supposed to be a record of the actual history of his accounts. And the good news is if he's made some mistakes in the past, perhaps he's had some late payments or went through a difficult season that resulted in negative information that has led to poor credit. That will repair itself over time, but it doesn't require you to pay $70 a month to anyone. I'd rather that $70 a month go to debt reduction.

So I would just pass that along. And if he wants to do a little bit of research on the web, he'll find that. And one of the things to look at would be the criteria that Fair Isaac uses. It's called the FICO score. If he just Googles percentage breakdown FICO score calculation, he'll find the percentages of how that score is calculated, the largest of which is his payment history. Next is his debt to limit ratios, and then the types of credit and on down from there. So I would encourage him to cancel that and just be an on time payer and manages money well.

Cindy, we appreciate your call and certainly wish your son the best on getting out of that. Next to Dalton, Georgia, Lisa. Hi, welcome to MoneyWise Live.

What's going on with you? Hi, I bought a condo last year and I still owe 110,000 on it. I have enough money in savings to pay it off. And then I have a 401k. But when I look at something like Dave Ramsey, it says that I need like $600,000 to retire when I'm 65. I'm 57 now.

So I'm confused. Do I need to keep money in my savings? Do I need to pay that condo off and just try to start saving more?

Or what do I need to do? Yeah, you know, I think the key Lisa is you will see all kinds of rules of thumb out there in terms of multiples of your income that you should have in the bank in a retirement account by certain ages in order for you to be on track. And here's what they're getting at. Social Security was only intended to provide at the most 40% of your pre retirement income.

And so you've got to have other means by which to supplement that if you're going to maintain your lifestyle. Now, most people live post retirement on 70 to 80% of their pre retirement income. Why is it less? Well, hopefully you're targeting a period of your life where you're completely debt free by the time you reach retirement. If you have kids, they're hopefully off the payroll by then.

And you know, we can simplify our lives. We're also not saving for retirement. So that comes out of the spending plan among other expenses.

And so it allows us to keep our lifestyle lower than it was during our working years. But even at 70 or 80% of your pre retirement expenses, you're still most often going to need more than you could expect to receive from Social Security. So the question is, how much do you need to have saved so that you could pull out and most advisors will say about 4% a year, which is the number on a conservative basis, you should be able to make up without taking too much risk and without you having to pull out any principle just living on the interest and the stock appreciation from that portion of your portfolio. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to your unique situation, those rules of thumb, that's all they are. And so what I would encourage you to do Lisa is spend some time thinking about what your budget will look like when you get to that season of your life. I would also try to target the payoff of your condo to your retirement date so that you can hang on to the cash now. But when you get to that point, make sure that you don't have that added expense to factor into your budget. And then just save as you can between now and then and pray that the Lord gives you a real vision of what he has for you in that season.

Lisa, thanks so much for your call. More calls. How should we as Christians think about investing? What if we could invest our money in a way that aligns with what we believe? At Eventide, we believe it is possible to love God and love our neighbor in the very practice of investing. We design investments for performance and a better world so you can invest for the future with a sense of wholeness and purpose. We call this investing that makes the world rejoice.

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Interested? Learn more by calling 1-800-791-6225 or online at chministries.org. You probably don't often consider that your interactions with others is an invitation to adventure with God. I'm Drew Dick, host of Moody Publishers' Reading for a Change podcast. In their new book, Scent, Heather Holloman and her husband share how you can live out your true identity, being sent to share Jesus with others. You'll learn practical strategies to engage those in your community into meaningful conversations that can lead to gospel transformation.

Grow in intimacy with Christ and with others by reading Scent. Now available at moodypublishers.com. Many people are experiencing financial challenges such as credit card debt, downsizing, dead-end jobs and depleted savings. In fact, more than half of all divorces are the result of financial pressures at home. But there's hope. In Your Money Counts, biblical financial expert Howard Dayton shows that the Bible is a veritable blueprint for managing your finances and you'll discover the profound impact it has on your relationship with God.

Your Money Counts is available when you click the store button at moneywiselive.org. With SRN News, I'm Bob Agnew in Washington. The White House says President Trump will proceed with appointing a new Supreme Court Justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg despite pushback from Democrats. Meanwhile, one key Senate Republican who was holding out is now backing the President's plan to quickly name a successor for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

That is Utah Senator Mitt Romney. Sales of existing homes rose 2.4 percent in August, up to the highest level since 2006 as the housing market continues to recover from what was a huge spring decline all brought on by the coronavirus outbreak. The tight supply also pushed the median price of an existing home sold in August to a record high of $310,600. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up by 140 points and ASZAC was up by 184.

The S&P 500 up 34. This is SRN News. You're listening to MoneyWise Live on Moody Radio and as you know our goal is to make you wise with your money. Of course, money problems can either make or break other things aside from just our wallet and that includes our relationships. I want to mention a resource that we have available on the MoneyWise Live website.

It's called Thriving in Love and Money. It's a great book by Shanti and Jeff Feldhahn. You might call it a money book but it actually isn't a money book.

They say you can uncover issues that cause many money conflicts and learn truths that are relationship game changers and we could probably all use that. Well, the good news is you can request your very own copy with a gift of $25 or more to MoneyWise Media. Again, MoneyWise is a listener supported organization so we would greatly appreciate any help you can offer us and as our way of saying thanks, we'd like to give you a copy of Thriving in Love and Money.

More information is available on our website at MoneyWiseLive.org. Meanwhile, back to the phones at 800-525-7000. Madeline is calling from Nashville, Tennessee. Hi, Madeline. How can we help today?

Hi. My husband and son have purchased the property and my son went to go live in it and his plan was to pay back my husband and he's been looking for loans but with all this COVID stuff, it's just, I mean, everything's kind of crazy. He has found a company that's willing to do business with them and I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the business. Quicken Loans is the company? Yeah, you know, we typically don't weigh in specifically and say one company is good or bad. I will say Quicken Loans is getting a lot of press lately because they're doing a ton of advertising and you might often see them under the name Rocket Mortgage but it's powered by Quicken Loans and they're all over the web doing a lot of TV advertising right now.

All indications are nothing out of the ordinary that would be negative. That's pretty reputable company rated pretty high by J.D. Power and the Better Business Bureau but here's what I would say though, Madeline, is that you really should always shop around when you're looking for a mortgage.

A study came out a couple of years ago that was just fascinating. It was a government study that showed that 47% of homebuyers don't compare lenders when they're looking for a mortgage loan and you know, this is the largest purchase we will make and so if we're going to shop around for a car, why wouldn't we shop around when we're going to finance a home? So I would direct you to bankrate.com. It's not the only website but it's certainly a good one where they would be able to look at a number of different lending options and not only do you want to know it's a reputable company and they've been around a while but obviously you want to make sure that the costs are going to be in line and that you're getting a good rate, a good annual percentage rate attached to that mortgage. So I don't have any problem with Quicken Loans or Rocket Mortgage at face value but I would say make sure you shop around before you select ultimately who you're going to go with. Yeah, I wrote that down.

That'll be helpful. One quick question is probably a stupid one. Do most mortgage places take points from the top, from the front, like a couple thousand dollars to loan you money? Well, yeah, there's always going to be costs and they're called different things. You might have an origination charge. You may have points where they're using those points to buy down the rate. I would try to avoid paying any points and if you did, I would pay very little. Keep in mind, we're in a historically low interest rate environment right now with even 30-year rates sitting around 2.8%, in some cases even lower. So this is not a time where you should be paying points, discount points to buy down the rate and I would try to push for as low an origination cost if any is possible. There's so much competition out there right now.

You should be able to shop around, make sure you count the costs, get that Truth in Lending Statement or get that Good Faith Estimate so you know exactly what you're going to be paying and make a decision based on who the company is but also what the total cost is going to be in the end. 1-800-525-7000. I mentioned the number again because we do have a few lines open. Again, 800-525-7000 to Chicago, Illinois. Hi, Joyce. You're next on MoneyWise Live. What's up?

Hi. Yes, I'm calling. I have a service contract for my appliances. My air conditioner has went out on me. I had to pay $100 for a service person to come out with this appliance policy I have.

I pay $49 a month. They will not fix it. They say previous existing condition when I got the contract with them, I had a young man to come out to actually service my air conditioner.

It worked briefly and it went back out. In the meantime, I had got this contract with them. When I called them after the 30 days they said it would take for my contract to go into effect.

I called them maybe 40 some days, something like that. When the man came out, they didn't honor the contract to fix it or replace it. I'm hearing that they are actually in breach of contract.

Yeah. Well, I think there's a couple of things you can do here, Joyce. I'm sorry to hear about what you're going through here because a denial of a home warranty or service I know is very, very frustrating. We've always got to start with the documents that really were behind this in the first place. Not only the documents outlining the scope of service that you've been paying for but the condition of the equipment that you had going into it and whether there was any notes made about whether certain things were not covered based on whether or not they were functioning properly at the time you took out. Obviously, the steps you need to take with the warranty company to appeal a denial should be listed right there in the document and that really is your next step. I think you then want to contact your home warranty company. If you can rebuild kind of a log of all the dates and times you spoke to somebody, if possible even who you spoke to, but at least what happened, that's going to be required paperwork when you appeal that denial. And then perhaps you want to have this reevaluated by a third party.

You could have a local contractor, a repairman, somebody come out and give you a written estimate for what is needing to be done to get it back into working order. You are going to have to follow that company's appeal process. At the end of the day, you could contact your attorney general's office and the recourse kind of progresses from there.

Hopefully, they'll do the right thing. I would probably try to get somebody a little higher up in the organization on the phone so you can make your case, but I think the key is let them know that you're serious about this. You have the proper documentation. You have reviewed the warranty documents. You're willing to follow the right protocol, but you're not satisfied with how things have unfolded. Keep us posted along the way.

Let us know how that turns out. Rob, you know, we get calls about these home warranty policies quite a lot, and I'm just curious your thoughts on them in general because based on the numbers Joyce just gave us, she's paying $588 a year. She's had $49 a month. So she's paying that already.

And then there, I believe in her case, was a $100 per event, you know, service charge that goes on that. Do you think it's a worthwhile thing to have? Is there ever a time where you would get one? Yeah.

Well, they're not my favorite, Rich, as you know. You know, I have in exchange for the peace of mind, there's just so many kind of loopholes and so many of these where you have to choose between certain repair companies, certain repairs are excluded. They may recover cover repairs instead of replacement when a replacement is really needed. You may not get the level of service you're looking for, and you're kind of locked into some specific options in terms of who is going to actually be doing the work.

So I would just say go to Consumer Reports if you're thinking about it and read up on it because you'll probably be surprised at what you read. Great idea. Joyce, we appreciate your call. Thanks so much for being a part of MoneyWise Live today, and we'll be back with more after this. Many people adopt an attitude toward marriage and finances that it'll all work out somehow, but sadly, it often doesn't. Financial woes can devastate a marriage, but there is a better way. God's Way. Money and Marriage God's Way by Howard Dayton will help you discover God's approach to growing your finances, strengthening your relationship with your mate, and cultivating Godly joy. Money and Marriage God's Way is available when you click the Store button at MoneyWiseLive.org.

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888-NEED-HIM. And experience what it means to be thirsty no more. Many people adopt an attitude toward marriage and finances that it'll all work out somehow. But sadly, it often doesn't. Financial woes can devastate a marriage, but there is a better way. God's Way. Money and Marriage God's Way by Howard Dayton will help you discover God's approach to growing your finances, strengthening your relationship with your mate, and cultivating Godly joy. Money and Marriage God's Way is available when you click the store button at MoneyWiseLive.org. This is MoneyWise Live. I'm Rich Rozzle in the seat today for Steve Moore, joined by the host of our program, Rob West, and your calls at 800-525-7000.

We go next to Tampa, Florida. Mike, welcome to MoneyWise Live. I understand you've got an insurance question for us.

I do, yeah. So I recently was let go at work, and with the amount of time of service I had in and my age, I'm retirement eligible, so I just went ahead and said, okay, God is saying it's time to retire. I have a variable life insurance policy that has a cash value of around $68,000, and I owe $55,000 on my home. So I'm wondering if I surrender the variable life insurance policy, take the cash value, and eliminate my monthly mortgage expense, and just pay off the house.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's an interesting idea, Mike, and I'm not necessarily opposed to it. A couple of thoughts, but first, a question. Do you need the death benefit associated with this policy? Is there somebody depending upon you, where if something were to happen to you, then that would create a hardship, either in a loss of income or added expense? Creating a hardship, no, I don't believe so. I've saved my entire life, and the $300,000 is the face value, which is minuscule, really, in the overall scheme of my portfolio.

Okay, very good. Well, I like the idea of entering retirement completely debt-free. As we've talked about with the previous caller today, that's going to put you in a position where it keeps your lifestyle, the fixed and discretionary expending that you'll have to cover on a monthly basis as low as possible, which means that you'd have to draw, hopefully less, from your retirement assets to supplement something like Social Security or any other guaranteed income sources you have. And that's a good thing, because it gives you more flexibility, it gives you more money to continue to grow while you're in these retirement years, and the Lord's kind of directing you to whatever he has for you next. And if there was a major expense down the road, and that typically in this season of life is going to be medically related, then obviously it preserves your cash for you to tap into later, or gives you perhaps additional money to give away and be generous with. But regardless, I love the idea of you entering this season debt-free.

And so the question is where to pull that from. And I think pulling from a life insurance policy with cash value is certainly one great option. You have to recognize, depending on how much you pull out, and this is why I was asking if you needed the death benefit, that withdrawal could either chip away at or wipe out that death benefit entirely. Some policies are reduced on a dollar-for-dollar basis with each withdrawal, some the death benefit is actually reduced by a greater amount than even what you withdraw, and eventually it could collapse the policy. I would also just be looking at any tax considerations. Typically with cash value withdrawals, they're not taxable up to your policy basis, the basis of what you put into the policy, unless certain exceptions apply. So I would talk to your agent, make sure you understand the implications both from the tax side as well as just the death benefit side, but this idea that you would use that money to pay off and become completely debt-free as you're entering this season of life I think is a great idea.

Rob, I'm just curious about this. Mike brings up a very good point, or rather you brought it up in talking to him, and that is the fact that if you're entering retirement, you've already saved appropriately for retirement, you may not need life insurance at all beyond that point. Yeah, exactly right, and I think oftentimes we think, well, we just need to always have life insurance. Remember the purpose of it is to offset a risk.

During our working years, most commonly with a husband and wife where one or both may be bringing income into the household that's used for expenses and they're using that to save for retirement or save for college or whatever that might be, and the unexpected untimely death of one spouse, there might be a real hardship placed on them, and so that's where the life insurance offsets that, loss of income, or covers an added expense like caring for dependents and small children that are now in daycare, and that was not a part of the family budget, or any number of things could be a lifelong dependent situation with a child that has special needs or making sure you have life insurance to cover the payoff of a debt, something like that, but eventually if you're saving, and that's why we recommend term insurance, if you're saving separately, you get to the place where you're essentially self-insured and you have the assets you need and the life insurance goes away. Right, that's great. Let's move on now to Muncie, Indiana. Deborah, I understand you got a mysterious, well, something mysterious stuck in an Amazon package you received last week. What was going on there?

Hi. Yeah. It looked like the box had already been sealed and there was an Amazon gift card in the envelope, just like if you'd bought one, stuck inside the box, but it was sitting on the bottom flap, and stupid me, I went into my account and put in the gift card numbers to see if I could figure out what the deal was. Now, after hearing what you were talking about, I'm concerned if I have given a scammer a way to get into my Amazon account, get my debit card numbers. Luckily, there was no money, praise God, on my debit card.

It won't be till the third, but if they... Well, I'm a little confused though, Deborah. So you said there was a gift card in there. Was it an Amazon gift card that was in the box?

Yeah. It was an Amazon gift card. And how does that relate then to... Okay. How does that relate though to your debit card? Because the Amazon gift card should have its own numbers.

Because since I went into my account, my Amazon account, and put in those gift card numbers, and of course on my account has access to my... because it has all my information on there. That's what I'm concerned about. Okay. Yeah.

I don't really see a risk here. So you went directly to the Amazon website, you went to the page on the Amazon site where you can redeem a gift card, and you just typed in the numbers that were on the Amazon gift card, correct? Right.

Yeah. Well, our team is really not finding anything on this situation in terms of a known scam and I really don't see how this could be used against you. It's certainly mysterious. Maybe it was dropped in by accident and you could certainly go to the chat feature on the Amazon website and ask them about it.

They'll provide some assistance. But the bottom line is it was an Amazon gift card. You type that into your Amazon account to redeem it. There was nothing on it. There's really not a way that I can think of, Deborah, where that could have in any way given anybody access to any kind of information that you have. So I wouldn't be concerned about it.

If you're curious and want to know more, head over to Amazon.com and ask them about it. But I suspect they'll say it was probably just done in error on accident and there's really nothing to be concerned about. Although, if you do learn something new, please give us a call back. We'd like to find out about this.

And if anybody else receives an Amazon gift card with thousands of dollars, well, we don't know how much hers was, but she said it was empty, so I don't think there was much there. Well, anyway, we'll we'll see how this plays out. Feel free to give us a call back. Let's see if we can squeeze in one last call to Round Rock, Texas. Laurie, you're last on Today's MoneyWise Live.

How can we help? Hi, Laurie. Are you with us? Hello. Hi. Yes, I'm sorry. That's okay. Go right ahead.

Hi. So my husband and I put in an earnest payment for a house and the house fell through the contract. I'm sorry, the foundation was terrible when we pulled out of that contract. And we've just had, you know, issues ever since we moved here.

We're really trying. And now we have the $50,000 that we were going to put down on the house. And I'm wondering what we should do with it, because we're living in a one bedroom with two babies and ourselves. We're having fights all the time. I am just really stressed and devastated and trying to figure out—we're not good money people—what we should do with the money we have now.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll tell you, being in a one room with small children, I can understand will add to a stressful situation, no doubt. Laurie, are you all actively looking for your next home, given that this one fell through?

And I would certainly concur with the idea that if you uncovered some real foundation problems, that's a telltale sign that you need to move on. But are you actively looking for perhaps what God has for you in this area? Well, it's wonderful. You asked what God had for me. God is really saying to me personally, because my husband's not, you know, he doesn't believe that way, that it's just not right right now, because the all the companies that we or all the builders that we can afford, they have the low, the low ratings.

And I know you can get, you know, a Miracle House and it has no issues, but so many of the ratings are low in our price range. So it just doesn't feel right. That felt right. I thought it was and it didn't work out. So yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I like the fact that I hear you're starting with the budget to make sure you're not trying to buy a house you can't afford because that that would create a real ongoing pressure situation because now you're having to pay for something that really doesn't fit into the budget. So we want to make sure ideally that principal interest taxes and insurance payment is no more than 25% of your take home pay. But I wouldn't be overly concerned. I mean, that's what the inspection process is for.

You can hire a very reputable inspector to come out to look at not only the foundation, but all of the wiring and, you know, the roof and I mean, all of it, the appliances and the floor and you name it and make sure that you are in fact buying something that's of good quality that does fit into your budget. And I would make this a matter of prayer. Ask the Lord to perhaps use this as an opportunity to reveal himself to your husband. That's obviously our primary objective, but I would just continue to press on asking the Lord to show you what he has in this area in terms of the next home and just recognize that you don't have to get into anything that doesn't check out.

And that's why people buy homes every day using inspectors. So I would stay at it. Don't get discouraged. And we'll ask our Money Wise Live community to be praying for you.

Yeah. And Rob, I'm always reminded that if we truly believe that God is our provider, then in this case and in every case, when it's the right time, the right house will be available at the right price. Our challenge is having the patience for that. Rob, thanks so much. We'll come back and do it again tomorrow. I look forward to it, Rich. Thanks for being here today. Indeed. Our host is Rob West. I'm Rich Rozzolin for Steve Moore, a reminder that Money Wise Live is a presentation of Moody Radio and Money Wise Media. Lord willing, we'll be back tomorrow, and I hope you will be too for Money Wise Live.