it's that kind of crap that drives me utterly mad. it's what joanna pointed out this already, including "retirement" planning: it increasingly requires more and more time to sift through reams of paperwork, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. and then you get punched with a bill a year later -- or whatever -- claiming some snafu which then requires that you sift through whatever paperwork you retained, make phone calls, write letters, follow up just to be sure you're not getting fucked around. i swear they do it on purpose figuring that, for every person who bothers to be vigilant about not getting fucked around, there are 3-4 more harried people who give up in despair.
on a slightly related note, i've noticed that credit card companies and etc. do this. it's happened to me twice, with a medical bill and an old credit card -- and it's happened to R as well. You have a card you think you haven't used and you move. You never use the card so it slips your mind and you're not getting any bills. Bam, five years later a collection agency calls and say, "you charged $25, and now you owe $784.49 in late fees and interest."
Me: "Uh, so, it's not like it's hard to find me. You found me after five years. couldn't the original credit card company contact me and tell me i owe money."
Them: "blah blah horse shit blah crappola blah. You can take care of this today ma'am by paying a special rate of 350.00. Otherwise, the 784.49 will keep on racking up interest and late fees."
In other words, I swear to dog that these collection agencies buy out the debt from the credit card company, physician, whatever. They sit on it for awhile and then try to get you to pay some exhorbitant amount of money, telling you they're giving you a deal.
Like I said, it happened once with a credit card I hadn't used since 1999. I was finally contacted about it in 2003! The other time, it was about 2 years after the fact, for a bill I hadn't ever rec'd because of an address snafu for sonshine's ambulance when he was in a car accident.
I thought it was just me and bad luck, but then it happened to my partner who just happened to catch it before time had passed and they racked up interest and late fees on him. He still owed more than he'd actually spent since, like me, he's the kind of person who uses credit cards only out of convenience and pays the balance every month. When it happened to my partner, I started to realize that it's probably a scam and, really, there out to be laws against this sort of crap.
shag -- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)