So I had to cash a check recently and it reminded me of a nonexistent trip to Malaysia. I had gotten some Disney on Ice tickets for my brother and his family and he paid me back with a check. Which is fine I guess, but I sometimes look at getting a check as, "hey, thanks for the errand.". I shouldn't complain about however anyone wants to pay me back but man, getting a check can be a hassle. At least for me. Banks close early and the little 'bank-marts' in certain grocery stores are open later, but they're not as convenient to get to. Or at least the one I would be going to isn't really on my way home. Well, I guess it is if you count that round about way home as on the way, then yes it is. So I get to the bank to cash the check and they ask me my security question. Really? It's a $44 check, but that's your policy so have at it. Now keep that in mind. So why did I tell you that bit of personal finance history? To be able to tell you this part of it. Let's take a trip back to 2007. My family was coming into town to go to the State Fair (see prior post about the State Fair fun) and I was running out really quick before they got to my house to grab some cash from an ATM. Got to the ATM, got my cash and did my customary glance at the receipt to see if everything looked ok and I was a little shocked. Now, I'm not going to retire tomorrow or anything but no one needs to hold a benefit in my honor either. I'm not breaking the bank but at any time I have a general idea of how much money I have in my account. And this receipt was trying to tell me that at that moment I was down about $1800. What the fu....well, there has to be some kind of accounting error going on because that is no where close to where it should be. So I rush home and give them a call on their way and say I may not be quite ready when they get here. I hop online to check my account and see what may have happened and I'm seeing charges to a Malaysian airline, some Turkish airline and some other toy countries too. WHAT THE FU...funny, I don't remember going to Malaysia. Or ever having a desire to go there. So I get on the 800 number line to my bank to see what the hell exactly is going on. It was a Saturday and I had them cancel, freeze or whatever they had to do to lock down the account so no more fraudulent charges could go through. They said to go to a branch to fill out paperwork to get an investigation going and to be able to get my money back. Keep in mind, this was my checking account, so that was actual money gone. Not like if it had been on a credit card and it was money in theory gone. Needless to say, I was a bit preoccupied at the fair. I still had a good time but was going over in the back of my mind, what the hell am I going to do. So I got back home from the fair and made my way to one of the afore mentioned bank-marts. Those are the only locations that are open at 4:00pm on a Saturday. And I wanted to get the wheels rolling as soon as I could. I had printouts of my online statement, and they had it pulled up too, and the manager on duty there kinda chuckled as I was filling out the paperwork saying this was the most clear cut fraud case he'd seen since he'd been there and that getting my money back should be a piece of cake. So that was a bit reassuring. I filled out the paperwork, and there was a lot of it, got is signed, dated and he was going to fax it to the bank's headquarters for fraud and it should get in the system pretty quickly. So I felt pretty confident...that was till I called the main number that Monday to make sure they had gotten my paperwork and that they didn't need anything else from me at the moment. To which they said they'd gotten it but it wasn't signed. Really? Because I saw myself sign it. So did the manager there. Sigh. So I decided to take a long lunch and get this straightened out. I remembered hearing about having to go to a bank of origination for some things so I went back to the branch that I had started my account with about ten years ago. Well, I had to go home first and get all the things I had to that point. Got to the bank and was waiting in line and got to a teller. I was explaining my story to her and she was amazed. That line forms to the left. Fortunately she was the head teller for that branch and she got right on it. She had the other branch fax me the paperwork they had and I'll be damned, when it came through there was my signature plain as day. Makes me wonder how the monkeys at the main branch couldn't see it. So she faxed that back in, I had to fill out some other paperwork and then start to close out that account and start a new one. I went into an office to start a new checking account and was going through all the paperwork to do that when the teller came back in with something else to sign and gave me an update on the total, and she was amazed. She said it had gotten to almost $13,000 dollars. Her and the associate helping me with the new account both said that was the biggest number for something like this they'd ever heard of and both said considering what it was, I shouldn't have any problem getting my money back. Now keep in mind, I'm only on the hook for some of that $13,000. My bank was on the hook for all of it because my account had been overdrawn by a considerable amount so not only will they be giving me my money back but trying to get back the rest of the fraudulent funds too. So with that, I felt pretty confident that it was all going to work out and they said the whole process should take four to six weeks. Well great, I have to wait that long to get my account back in order. And I had two accounts. Since the stuff had happened to my original account, which was now locked down in about fifteen different ways, they would have to put any recovered money into that one and then transfer it to my new one. Guess they couldn't put it directly into my new one for some reason or another. So at this point, I was left with a damaged checking account, a brand new checking account and no debit card. Until you don't have access to your money via debit card, you never really realize how much you use it. Man, was that a pain in the ass. And about a week later I had my new card but boy was that an inconvenient week. Then I had to go back to work and send in my new info to the payroll department for the direct deposit and all that. And here's a fun note on that, it would take one pay cycle to go into effect so the next check would be mailed to me and I'd have to go to the bank to deposit it. JOY! Remember my initial thought about going there with a check, thanks for the errand. So everything had been working itself out, I'd been getting letters from my bank with charge backs and all, which were then transferred to my new account and after about five weeks I had every last penny back and all was right with the world. So that was mid September.
Now let's skip ahead to the second week of October. I got a letter from my bank saying upon inspection they were going to be reversing one of the charges because they had deemed it a 'valid transaction' and had laid out the steps for me to dispute that. WHAT THE FUCK!!! Hell yeah I'm gonna dispute it. The first step was to have something in writing. Now, as you people may have noticed, I don't have a problem writing and going on and on. And man did they get an earful in letter form, I think I stopped short of calling them assholes. Which I think I would have been justified in calling them but that probably wouldn't have helped anything. However, I did lay out to them in no uncertain terms why this was bullshit and was not going to happen. First among them goes back to what I told you earlier about getting asked my security question when trying to cash a $44 check. For forty-four dollars they ask me that question, yet for multiple transactions that were hundreds and thousands of dollars per transaction ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET, not a single red flag was raised in the system? Really? Nothing at all seemed odd about that? Not one bit? Now I know why all of them needed bailed out if that's all the better accounting they had in place. Maybe, and it's just a wild thought, have something in place to keep tabs on that. When I moved into my house the first thing I bought was a bigscreen tv. With a credit card. The very next day I had an automated fraud alert call to verify that I was the one buying it. Wow, so it can be done. And if they'd bother to look at my banking history from the last decade, 90% of any and all transactions were in the central and northeast part of my state. And at that time, the exceptions to that were Seattle, Las Vegas, Boston, New Hampshire and points along the way. That's it. That's the list. And I laid that out to them very plainly with probably no small amount of cynicism and sarcasm. So I was curious how they thought several fifteen hundred dollar airline ticket purchases ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET were valid. Well, I guess that could be a semantic argument on their part to back out of it. As soon as a card is scanned and accepted, that is a valid transaction. Regardless of how fraudulent it may be. So needless to say I was hot that evening but nothing I could do till the next morning. So that next morning I called back to that branch and asked for the teller I'd been working with only to find out she was out sick. Oh great, now to have to try and rehash the last two months of nonsense to a brand new person. I started to explain my story and apparently that teller had heard of it and put me in with the manager, who I guess was as familiar with it as the teller. When I came in that lunch hour with my new paperwork and all she was a little amazed that they were trying it. Actually, her exact words were, "I've never seen them try to reverse an amount this big before.". Well that's good to know I'm a trailblazer. Now the first go around I think there were six or seven different transactions, so I had to fill out six or seven different sets of paperwork for each one. So I asked her if I should expect this for all of them and if I'd have to fill out this new paperwork for the rest that would be coming through. She said that hopefully this would catch them before any others were sent out and she could get those from going through as well as getting this one re-reversed. So I felt reassured, not totally confident, but at least reassured. So about a week later I got a letter from the headquarters saying the money was being put back into my account. Not a mention anywhere of 'sorry we were dipshits about that' or anything like that. Just that it was back in the account. Well at least I had all the cash back. When all the dust had settled I tried to figure out where my number may have gotten out so that Mubupoo could have snagged it and started racking up frequent flyer miles to all those shit destinations on my dime. The only thing that was an out of the way purchase (by that I mean not a usual gas station, grocery store or restaurant) was an online purchase of concert tickets a few weeks before this whole fiasco started. So boys and girls, what do we take away from all of this? Other than banks are machines and not looking out for your best interests unless you point it out to them? Well first, even though credit card companies are evil at least they have the common sense to ask about the validity of major purchases. That's be nice if the bank would take note of that. And secondly, if you are doing an online purchase, use a credit card and not a debit card. If something like that happens it's not your money that you're out, it's just 'credit money' which is kinda like Monopoly money at that point. And something like that would be easy for the card company to wipe from your account and then it's on them to go all collections pitbull and find the jagoffs doing that that actually owe them. Which I guess makes them slightly less evil, but still evil. At least they'll give you your money back and then not try to take it back again a couple weeks down the road.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment