Wednesday, May 14, 2008

ID Theft, As Described By A Recent Email Exchange

For no other reason than I don't want to describe it again b/c I've been doing that since yesterday morning.


-----Original Message-----
From: Megan
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 11:09 AM
To: Jeannie
Subject: You Ok?

?

From: Jeannie
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 11:16 AM
To: Megan
Subject: RE: You Ok?

No, actually. Some asshole got a hold of my debit card numbers and spent over a thousand dollars at Dell and of all places fucking Bed Bath and Beyond. I spent the whole morning at my bank and now I'm waiting for the police to call me back to file a report. My checking and savings accounts are pretty much frozen, there's no guarantee I'll get this money back, and who knows how long this will all take. Of course I'm assuming the worst right now but I've been calm and reasonable all day so far about this. Downright pleasant, even, in all of my dealings with my bank and the police and the Visa fraud people. Right now I just want to punch someone. I work my ass off for the money I have and a thousand bucks makes a big difference to us right now. So, yeah. I'm really mad.

From: Megan
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 11:22 AM
To: Jeannie
Subject: RE: You Ok?

You will get your money back. But, it may take time – and that is TERRIBLE. There is fraud protection for debit cards – you are covered. The only reason they give you an ‘if’ about replacement is so that they can cover their asses in case the victim is actually the perpetrator. You will get your money back.


From: Jeannie
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 11:29 AM
To: Megan
Subject: RE: You Ok?

I know, I know. I'm just pissed off. I have this sneaking suspicion it was these people at this awful place called Farm Boy Drive-In that I had to stop at on my way to Centralia on Saturday. They wouldn't let me use the bathroom w/o buying something. So I bought a milkshake and I had to do it w/ my debit card. I have no proof at all that those ppl are the culprits except that they work at a place called Farm Boy Drive-In. And that they all stared at me when I walked in. Seriously, I hardly think I vibe "urban" or whatever, but if there was some dude playing old timey piano he would have stopped playing when I walked in.

----------

Seriously, what kind of asshole cleans out someone's checking account to shop at Bed Bath and Beyond? Yuck. And, of course, I still have no proof, but stay away from Farm Boy Drive-in off I-5 near Centralia. Even if they're not thieves they make terrible milkshakes and they like to stare at outsiders. Also, there's a rest stop at the next goddamn exit (which, hi, WSDOT, how about some signage on that a little sooner, huh?).

3 comments:

Glenn Fleishman said...

That is the sucky suck suck suck. I had my credit card # (not card) stolen back in Feb. 05, I think it was, and Chase (First USA at the time) was fabulous about NOT charging me but sucky about getting the bills straightened out. It took a few calls for them to give me cleaned up bills. And then AOL (which the thief signed up for) charged for the next 18 months while I called Chase every month and had them reverse the charges. See, AOL had a secret deal with the credit card companies (that Chase admitted) that once you agreed to be charged by AOL, there was practically no way to stop it!

Ryan said...

That's terrible. If they used the card number to order things online, you'd think it would be easy to track down exactly who did it, or the address where they thought they were going to receive the ill-gotten goods...

Julie and I went up to Vancouver, B.C. for a weekend, and a week later I found my checking account completely cleaned out. The thing that really sucked was that they had somehow used an ATM machine to duplicate the card (because I still had mine in my wallet), and they had video of me putting in my PIN. So they hit every ATM from Surrey to West Van and emptied my account.

I had to prove that I wasn't in Canada that day, which was easy enough, but it still took a while to straighten out.

Z_gal said...

It seems to me that there are two kinds of people: those who've had this kind of theft happen to them, and those who don't know it's about to happen to them.
I'm sorry to hear you're the former, but I'm glad you've been able to get the process going with the bank and such.
My mom's credit card called her a few years ago and asked if she'd bought $6000 worth of jewelery in Taiwan the previous day. If anything, these comments show you're in good and abundant company.