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Feb. 11th, 2003 09:31 am
Defrauded!
I got home in a good mood last night: Tired, but early and full of HAM. There were two messages on my machine: My 3,489th call from a satellite t.v. salesman and a "very important message" from Discover®'s fraud-prevention service.
I rolled my eyes. What was it this time? The only odd recent transaction I could think of was an order I'd placed over a month ago that only got billed last week when the product actually shipped. Does this look suspicious? I don't know because I don't work in the industry and the operators won't tell me the criteria.
When I finally got through to the representative (after an annoying gamut too tedious to relate), I wasn't exactly hostile, but I also wasn't extremely co-operative. This changed when she asked, "You wrote a check recently?" and I said, "No, I never write checks on my charge accounts." She put me on hold.
I hate those damn checks. They are so transparently an attempt to get me to borrow money so they'll earn finance charges. I throw them out as soon as I get them--which is like once a month. Sure, maybe someday I'll need a cash advance, but Nuphy tells me that can all be handled by phone anyway.
I get another rep and this one tells me that someone tried to post a $3500 check on my account, but the bank alerted them. She's not sure what tripped suspicions--possible the fact that the signature is in "a feminine hand". Unfortunately, she's looking at a scan so bad she can't make out anything. She has to cancel my account and start a new one; the one compensation to all this hassle is that they won't be sending out any more of the damn checks on the new account.
Now that I know the transaction is safely blocked, I've gone from worried to pissed. The most likely scenario is that an utterly incompetent postal employee delivered the check to someone else in the building, who then decided to rip me off. (It was briefly troubled by the fact that I'd had a near-stranger in my house for almost a week, but it just seems so totally out-of-character for HCJB.) I really wish they could tell me who. Even absent that information, I thought about posting a sign in the vestibule saying:
I rolled my eyes. What was it this time? The only odd recent transaction I could think of was an order I'd placed over a month ago that only got billed last week when the product actually shipped. Does this look suspicious? I don't know because I don't work in the industry and the operators won't tell me the criteria.
When I finally got through to the representative (after an annoying gamut too tedious to relate), I wasn't exactly hostile, but I also wasn't extremely co-operative. This changed when she asked, "You wrote a check recently?" and I said, "No, I never write checks on my charge accounts." She put me on hold.
I hate those damn checks. They are so transparently an attempt to get me to borrow money so they'll earn finance charges. I throw them out as soon as I get them--which is like once a month. Sure, maybe someday I'll need a cash advance, but Nuphy tells me that can all be handled by phone anyway.
I get another rep and this one tells me that someone tried to post a $3500 check on my account, but the bank alerted them. She's not sure what tripped suspicions--possible the fact that the signature is in "a feminine hand". Unfortunately, she's looking at a scan so bad she can't make out anything. She has to cancel my account and start a new one; the one compensation to all this hassle is that they won't be sending out any more of the damn checks on the new account.
Now that I know the transaction is safely blocked, I've gone from worried to pissed. The most likely scenario is that an utterly incompetent postal employee delivered the check to someone else in the building, who then decided to rip me off. (It was briefly troubled by the fact that I'd had a near-stranger in my house for almost a week, but it just seems so totally out-of-character for HCJB.) I really wish they could tell me who. Even absent that information, I thought about posting a sign in the vestibule saying:
To whom it may concern: Nice try, asshole, but Discover® wasn't fooled. Expect to be hearing from the Feds any day now.But what would the point be? I already vaguely dislike many of my neighbours; now, whenever one impinges on my consciousness, I'm thinking, "Are you also an attempted felon?"