IME banks don’t “keep an eye out”* they either cancel and re-issue numbers or they don’t and leave everything alone. There’s no in between. (Yes, I tried this once)
*The only time I’ve seen banks that will keep an eye on things is when it’s a business account and you are working with a banker that keeps an eye on things on a regular basis to begin with. Of course, business also pay considerably more for their accounts then consumers do.
If it were me, I’d still cancel all the cards and get new ones. I’m a suspicious bitch that way.
Cancel the cards NOW. I believe that you’re still liable for the first $50 AFTER you notify the card companies that the cards are stolen or compromised, so if you have even a few cards, you’re liable for a couple hundred bucks. And I think that debit cards are not covered by this. If someone got hold of my debit card, my entire checking account could be easily drained, and I wouldn’t get that money back.
This can’t be completely true. I know people who have received calls from their banks because of suspicious activities with their accounts.
I think what he’s saying is that they won’t put your account in “extra special” mode where the threshold for suspicious activity is lower. They’re watching all accounts equally, and the only special treatment they will give you is to cancel your card.
That’s one of the reasons why I don’t use my debit card or checking account for much of anything other then to pay my credit carts. Fraudulent activity on my CC’s, I can deal with that. Fraudulent activity on my checking account…well, now I have no cash until it’s straightened out.
That just means your account threw some red flags in their computer. If you okay the transactions everything goes back to normal. If you don’t, they do whatever they do to those transactions, cancel your card and send you a new one. But the person who answers the phone when you call the number on the back of your card can’t change what it takes to trigger those flags nor can he or she personally keep an eye on your account. If you call up and ask them to do that they’re going to suggest you cancel your account and reissue a new card. For how cheap it is (for them) to do that (I can’t imagine it costs them more then a dollar or two), they’re not going to do anything more costly.
Now, a business account with a banker is entirely different. I have a business banker that actually, physically looks at all the transactions that happened during the night on my account (as well as all of his other clients accounts). If anything, in his opinion, looks strange, he’ll put a hold on it until he can talk to someone and he has done that. We’ve received calls along the lines of “Hey, there’s a check trying to go through to John’s Cleaning for $85000, I just wanted to make sure that’s right, you guys have never written a check any where near that large” or "There’s a check trying to clear for “$1800, but it’s hand written, most of your handwritten checks are for less then $200, is this okay, should I let it through” or even better “Hey, I have about 10 checks on hold, if I let them though you’ll be overdrawn, what do you want me to do?” (Our options being, bounce them and we’ll deal with the people we wrote them to or put them through and we’ll be down with the cash to cover them in a few hours/move money from account xxxx to cover them)
But, as I said above, we pay quite a bit more then a consumer for this “privilege”.
You could scrape enough together for a fast food meal yesterday, and you say in the OP that there was money in the wallet that you didn’t even remember putting in there (which was returned intact), and you didn’t even offer up five bucks for the safe return of your wallet? Sorry, that’s bad form.
Interesting that the OP is the one that lost her wallet, and then complains about the tardiness of the finder because she’s hungry. Consider yourself lucky that it was found. If it wasn’t, you would have been going even longer without food.
Personally I’d rather have some handmade craft items than $5.
And really Wilbo there’s a time when someone doing you a favour, isn’t really doing you a favour anymore. It’s like if someone offers to paint your guest bedroom and 2 years later it’s still not done despite the materials having been sitting there and you finally just hire someone else to do it and then the first person gets pissed off.
No favour there - all they did was cause you to have crap lying around your house for 2 years. Ditto with the wallet - I didn’t hear monstro say she wouldn’t pick up her wallet - just that this lady offered to bring it to her. How long does she have to wait before the lady being nice turns into the lady being a pain in the ass?
She didn’t complain to the lady. It’s perfectly in good form to come here and complain to us, though.
If I returned a wallet and someone offered me five bucks, I’d think it was really crass. If they offered me their sincere thanks, I’d be perfectly satisfied. If they offered me craftwork, or cookies, or a card, I’d be touched by their manners.
But in the OP the lady said she was going to bring it over that day, so Monstro assumed she would have everything back in a few hours and could still eat. If she new that wasn’t going to be the case, she could call a friend of some family before it was too late (at night, that is) to borrow some money so she could shop for the weekend. Come Monday (if I understand everything) she would need to go to the DMV, get a new ID and then she could go to the bank to pull out some money and she would be good until she got new CC’s. The problem is, the lady never showed up, Monstro now has no food or any way to get any.
To give another example, it’s like if you call your friend and say “Hey, I’m at the bar and the buses are done running, can you come pick me up? You can, are you sure, I can just hop in the last cab, it leaves in five minutes…okay, see you then.” and then 10 minutes later your friend calls back to say they can’t make it. Now what.
Sure it was nice if your friend to offer to pick you up. But it would have been nicer to just say no to begin with.
Okay. I said it was only a possibility. I’m not a banker so I don’t know the details of how their monitoring works. But I thought perhaps the bank could adjust where they put the “red flags” on a particular account. After all, it’s in their interest to avoid fraud as much as the customer’s.
Your analogy is not even comparable to the situation described by the OP. The lady that found the wallet, was not a friend, but a good samaritan that found the wallet and left a note. She didn’t even know the OP. She could have easily taken the cash out of it and tossed the rest in the trash can.
The OP could have easily said when she called that she appreciated her finding the wallet and she would come and get it from her. But she didn’t. You really shouldn’t complain about someone that is getting your property back to you, that you lost. The OP should be grateful that she got it back at all and that she’s not having to go and get a new ID, new bank cards, etc. It’s not the good samaritan’s fault that the OP has no food in her house, or no other way to get cash.
But the Good Samaritan isn’t owed anything. It would be one thing if you owed someone a debt but you’re not obligated to pat them on the back for not doing something against the law.
Besides, this Good Samaritan sounds vaguely creepy. I don’t think I would have bothered to even call her if I were the OP.
Put yourself in Monstro’s shoes. You lost your wallet, but found a note. You call, I answer.
“Yeah, found your wallet, I’ll drop it off later today, no big deal”
Great, you think, I can go shopping tonight…I don’t show up.
You call me tomorrow. “Sorry, couldn’t make it, what is tomorrow, Friday? I’ll swing by around 7pm and drop it off, see you then” again, I don’t show up.
You call again, I don’t answer my phone. Now it’s the weekend. You can’t get to the bank to withdraw money, you can’t get any new CCs overnighted to you. You’re out of money until at least Monday you have no food in the house…maybe enough change to get some McDonalds, but that’s it.
At what point do I go from Good Samaritan to asshole. I mean, if every few days I still assure you I’m coming by tonight (ignoring any possibility of it being a scam for the moment), but it ends up being 3 weeks before I finally get it to you am I still a nice guy? ISTM at that point I’m not doing you a favor anymore.
Other then the fact that in one case the two people knew each other and in the other case they didn’t, it’s pretty similar. The comparison I was attempting to make is when something that appears to be a favor…isn’t.
Promising to bring someones wallet back and then not doing so and leaving them without cash, IMHO is pretty similar to promising to drive someone home from the bar and then not, leaving them stranded at the bar.
Who said anything about paying the good samaritan? Without calling her initially, the OP wouldn’t have gotten her wallet back.
They are not similar. Your friend is your friend. Someone you can call ask a favor from, and normally expect them to respond accordingly. If they don’t fulfill it, then maybe they are not really that good of a friend.
The good samaritan, found the lost wallet and made an effort to get it back to its owner. The samaritan has no obligation. If any the OP should have gone out of her way to not have the samaritan have to do anything else…such as go and get the wallet herself.
I understand your point about people doing favors and not following through…but I think that when someone finds your lost property, and then you complain about the timeliness it is returned…you sound pretty petty.