I've had to live the past week without my debit card ... and let me just tell you .. that was a effing huge inconvenience. There's a whole story behind it and of course I'm going to tell you why .... because what fun would it be to just tell you how inconvenienced I was.
This whole mess started out with a Speed Dating event. My friend really really wanted to go to this Speed Dating thingy that we really knew nothing about. I was leery because it's not like we saw an ad for it in the newspaper or heard a story about it or anything legitimate. No, someone put a flyer on my car in the parking garage. I told her --- and for the purpose of this story, we're going to call my friend ... er.... Samantha. I told Samantha as a joke only because she's boy crazy. So once I told her about it, she kept asking and asking me about it until finally she managed to get me to sign up. The payment went through pay pal ... so I figured it was at least my money was safe.
The day after we signed up, she called me frantic, yelling at me to check my debit card and check my email because someone used her credentials to order something from a Fry's in California and she thought the whole thing was a fraud. She even called the Police to file a report of Identity Theft. She was just yelling into the phone at me and not listening to anything I said ... so after our discussion ended and just to be on the safe side ... I called my credit union and reported my debit card as lost -- which locked my account from any further transactions. I requested a stop pay on the pay pal transaction and then I notified Life Lock, my fraud protection plan, of a possible breech of my information. After that ... I was calm about the whole thing. If any charges appeared on my card -- or if someone tried to open credit with my information -- I was completely covered.
What I hadn't planned for was the convenience factor of not having my debit card for an entire week. Seriously -- what a pain in the ass. I couldn't get gas, couldn't go to the coffee shop without cash, couldn't just run off to Target and spend a miscellaneous 100 bucks here and there. I couldn't cash advance anywhere .... about the only thing I could do was pay my bills online. If I needed cash ... I had to GO TO THE BANK and get it. Thank god I live within five miles of a credit union location!!! What if I had lived out of state??? OMG -- I would have never made it, because it seriously took a WEEK to get a new card.
I got the new card yesterday and I activated right away and ran to the store to use it because I was having debit card withdrawal. I got up to the cash register and swiped away ... only to get a decline message from the cashier. Thank god I had taken another source of payment with me ... otherwise I would have had to walk out of the store empty handed. Then I went to a fast food place to get a sub and again when I tried to use my card -- declined. Yeah, great. By now, the credit union was closed and I could do nothing about it.
So today I called the Credit Union to find out what the deal was/is. I was on hold with member services for about 15 minutes before someone came on the line to inform me that there was some glitch in their system and everyone that got a new card last week ... myself included ... couldn't use them. And, get this, because it's an example of really bad customer service "There is no ETA on when it's going to get fixed" "In fact, we might need to send out new cards to everyone to fix the problem". UGH!! Are you serious? I might have to go ANOTHER week without easy access to my money? geezus criss .... Let me just say for the record I HATE SPEED DATING EVENTS!!.
Okay, so on that topic ... the credit union paid that transaction somehow after I had put the stop pay on it and someone at the credit union assured me that it would not be paid. (More bad customer service -- because they were totally like -- oops, sorry when I called to complain about that.) So I called the company putting on the Speed Dating event to cancel -- because there was no way in hell I was going to go to it after all the grief they had put Samantha through. I called like 6 times and left messages -- but no one ever called me back. Finally I logged a dispute with pay pal and cited my reasons. A day later, I got an email from said speed dating company that "they have a NO-REFUND policy". The best they could do was give me a credit to attend a future event.
No Refunds? What type of cracker jack outfit doesn't give a refund if you cannot use their product .. and why is that not disclosed on their website anywhere? I "signed up" again using an alias and no where on any of their pages does it say they will not refund a persons money -- another clue into how much this is a scam. I asked when their next event was going to be in Dubuque and of course they didn't have an answer for it -- and really why would they? Even if Samantha and I were the only ones to sign up (which I doubt) it's $50 they've made free and clear by printing some bogus cards up and sticking them on car windshields in a parking ramp. Needless to say, that really pissed me off so then I went all ape-shit on them about how bogus I thought their company was and how I was going to report them to the newspaper and bla bla bla ... and demanded a refund ... which ironically only took them an hour to do ...a "one-time only" credit back to pay pal. Yeah, don't worry you Speed Date fakers ... I won't waste my time signing up again and I'll be sure to bad-mouth you all over town, so no one else does either.
So, big whoop, I got my money back -- can't do anything about it since I can't get into my account!!! I really showed them huh!!! So instead of Speed Dating Friday night .. I'm going to a "Ladies Night Out" fund-raiser for the Symphony .. with some work friends. (a legitimate event). Boys are stinky anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment