I keep a $20 bill at all times. Just in case. I’ll go for months without needing it, but every once in a while I will and I’m glad I had it. Otherwise I haven’t carried cash for years, maybe 25 years.
In all that time it hasn’t been a problem (except the rare time I need a little, hence my emergency $20 bill policy).
24 hours. One day since the new carpet install. Now what do I find, cat blurf in two spots. The door is getting bungeed shut, no more access for furballs!
Ooo, fun with bank cards!
I just got a new phone; none of my virtual cards transferred over, and apparently my transfer from a SIM card to an eSIM caused all manner of upset with the banks. Wells Fargo finally let me add my card yesterday; now I need to figure out why Discover is rejecting my attempts.
Nature’s Miracle
Can confirm. (Cite: I used to have three (3) ferrets at one time, plus a cat & rats. Yes, all at once. Yes, they - mostly - got along. But ferrets, as wonderfully cute and delightfully playful as they are, are literal shit machines. And that one brain cell bonking around in their skull doesn’t allow for much litter training.)
Yep - and even if it’s resolved in your favor: My daughter’s debit card was compromised earlier this year or late last year (she didn’t have a credit card at the time). The credit union resolved it within a week or two, but in the meantime, her account was frozen while they sorted it out. She was about to leave for an international trip and had no way to access her funds. I had to lend her one of my credit cards to use on her trip (and leading up to it).
Years ago our bank had given my wife and I a debit card tied to our checking account. After a while I took hers away because she kept mistaking it for a credit card. Not only was money being withdrawn from our checking account without being entered in the check register, but we were being charged overdraft fees because there wasn’t enough money in the account to cover the withdrawals.
We are indeed. Sheetz is big here too.
I won’t use those standalone ATMs - there are security vulnerabilities.
More credit card (“CC”) follies here. This has a sorta happy ending, but a lot of First World vexation along the way.
I have a couple of CCs I use every month for both recurring and retail charges. Adds up to several pages of line items and I’m not always super diligent about verifying each and every charge. The big ones, yes, but all the rest? Not really.
~3 months ago I notice a $30 charge for Hulu. I don’t have Hulu (that I know of). Fuss with their website to see if maybe I created an account there but somehow it never entered my password vault. Nope. Fuss with my phone & smart TV to see if they think I have a Hulu account. Nope.
Try to contact Hulu customer service via website. Sorry, no can do. Between the “AI” and their scripts, you need an account login to proceed. The one thing I don’t have. Give up in disgust / frustration / laziness.
Next month I get hit for $30 again. Now I’m curious. Go back through all the old statements, and they’ve been charging me every month since Aug 2024. Now that’s enough money to actually get my sorry ass off the couch (wherefrom I am NOT watching Hulu since I don’t have an account there). Fight with the website some more, get nowhere. Fcukit!
Another month goes by. … $30 hits again. Now I’m feeling insulted. So today is the Chosen Day to drain the Hulu swamp once and for all. Even if violence is called for.
Call my CC issuer intending to dispute the charges. Which means cancelling the card. Which also means updating that stored card number at like 30 websites and phone apps. Gaah! Such fun.
CC fraud dept (a remarkably understandable foreign person) says I ought to call Hulu first; maybe it’s a lost account there and all is well. Besides, our ability to chargeback the charges will be better if you’ve talked to them and they admit the charges aren’t yours. I explain my non-success with Hulu’s customer non-service. Miracle of Miracles, they had a secret phone number for live people at Hulu I could call.
So I call. Another miracle: somebody answers promptly and although he’s not in the USA, he’s both bright and understandable. We try all my various email addresses; we try my birthday; I’m definitely not a customer. We try my CC number they’ve been charging; they can’t find it. About now I’m despairing of fixing this neatly.
Then he has a burst of insight: “Was your card compromised recently & replaced?” I check my records: “Yep, end of 2024.” “What’s the old CC number?” Fortunately I’m enough of a data packrat that I have it to give him. So I do. “A Ha! Your old dead card is paying for a Hulu account with email XYZ1 etc etc. Do you recognize that email?” “No, absolutely not.” “OK, we caught the fraudster.” Yaay! So he cancels ‘my’ Hulu account I never created and somebody’s fraudulent stream of entertainment screeched to a halt a couple minutes later.
Hooray for that much. The bleeding has stopped.
Call CC company back. Get an almost incomprehensible foreign lady. Seems bright, talks at 500 syllables per minute with a thick accent. Sigh. But joy of joys, they can credit back all 14 charges dating back over a year, so over $400, and kill my card and snail mail a new one. Meantime the e-wallet in my phone has the new card number before I even hang up the phone.
She tells me that for big billers like most phone apps or e-commerce sites, the bank will automatically forward charges against the old CC number to the new CC number for 150 days. Which is great for not immediately bouncing the rent or the phone bill, but also makes it real easy for fraud to persist past getting a new card. Lesson learned. How exactly Hulu used my old card number for 9 months worth of charges to the new card is a bit of a mystery, but her English and my ears were not up to resolving that curiosity question.
Once I get the physical card in a week-ish I can sit down with my list of umpteen websites to update. Of my two cards, this was more the recurring stuff, not the pay and go stuff. So lots of things to update. First World Problems.
But when the dust settles, I’ve had a couple months of annoyed procrastination, 2 hours of customer “service”, but I get my money back and some bastard somewhere enjoyed a year of free streaming.
So score one for the little people putting it over on The Man at BigCorp.
Time for dinner & a drink.
There are so many security cams in Wawa & Sheetz that they are probably safer than the one at a bank branch as they’d get video of anyone installing a skimmer, at lest walking in/out of the store. ATMs don’t necessarily record video 24/7; only when a transaction is being attempted. Additionally, both use PNC ATMs, if you have a PNC account, you don’t even need to insert your card into the machine so no chance of it getting skimmed.
If you don’t mind a suggestion, I try to link as much as I can to PayPal, so I can update multiple sites in one stop (I have something of a talent for misplacing/damaging debit cards).
Now that’s a clever idea. Thank you!
Net of giving PayPal (yet another notorious data snoop) access to substantially my entire purchase history.
Funny but PayPal is one of the sites that has the card that needs updating. It’s a common way to pay for stuff overseas; I don’t use it much in the USA.
Piggybacking off of LSLGuy’s CC fun, a debit card fun story:
Had a customer whose had her account compromised the 31st/1st of the month. She had plenty of money when she wrote all her checks bill pays but the account was drained the next day when they were supposed to be credited at her rent/mortgage, car payment, insurance, utilities, etc. After the appropriate (quick) investigation she got her money back from us a day or two later but, of course, the damage was done; a bunch of late &/or bounce fees. Many places will give you one grace/waiver a year, which means if she was legitimately late already in that year or was late later in the year (it happens sometimes when people go on vacation) you’ve already used up your ‘get out of jail’ free waiver. Ended up costing her a couple of hundred dollars in fees from other places. We waved any fees we charged her but it was not in our policies to credit her for fees that someone else charged her for something that was not our fault. In the end, it cost her a couple of hundred dollars.
Moral 1 - don’t use a debit card
Moral 2 - if you do use a DC, spread your payments out throughout the month.
Contradictory medical instructions, grrrr….
I have surgery on Monday.
Before my last one, I was told a) stop Metformin entirely the day before, and b) drink a sugary drink (Gatorade or Ensure Clear) the night before and the morning of). This time around: the doctor’s instructions say skip the Metformin that morning, the NURSE yesterday said to skip it for THREE days. Nothing about a sugary drink. There are indeed concerns over hypoglycemia around surgery, so having one’s blood sugar a little on the high side is actually recommended….
Some documents say “nothing at all even water after midnight”. Others say “nothing 8 hours before the surgery”. Others say “no FOOD 8 hours before surgery, but water is OK until time to leave for the hospital”.
So, my plan is: eat something a bit after midnight. Pretzels or other easy-to-digest snack. Drink a LOT right then. That’ll be a minimum of 9 hours before the surgery. Get up 3 hours before surgery and slam down a glass of water. The “nothing after midnight” rule is stupid anyway: when I had my previous surgery, it was booked for 3 PM and I wasn’t actually taken back until 7 PM. It’s the same whether your surgery is 8 AM or 4 PM.
As far as the Metformin? I don’t know. I was already planning on sneaking a dose in tomorrow morning (over 72 hours before) but now, with the doctor’s instruction, I’m inclined to split the difference…. hopefully they’ll get back to me quickly on that.
Compared to that medical rant this one is a micro:
Saw my PCP for periodic checkup a couple days ago. She wanted me to get some imaging. Historically she/I used a diagnostic imaging clinic in town that has since been bought by private equity and is being systematically enshittified and looted from the top. She said “No, don’t use them. Take this paper scrip and make an appointment at the hospital’s imaging center. No more private equity clinic for my patients.”
OK. So I go do that at the hospital clinic a couple days later. Easy peasy.
Then the shitty clinic calls repeatedly leaving more or less mysterious voicemails. “Call us about testing your (unnamed) doc has ordered.” I suspect it’s about the same imaging just done, but I don’t know for sure, so don’t want to ignore this. I will say HIPAA (or vendors’ fear of HIPAA) certainly gets in the way of effective efficient customer service. And of course they’ve laid off everyone who’d answer the phone, so I can’t successfully call them back, despite trying diligently.
Eventually they call when I can answer on the second ring and yes, somehow doc sent them an e-order for the same imaging I already got. “Never mind” I tell them. I wonder how many more times they’ll call again trying to get me?
Gee thanks, Doc.
Anyhow, hope your surgery goes well & easily!
No one but all the banks in the now fourth largest economy in the world.
We got a debit card for my daughter to take to Germany. She needed something in her name and she’s only 16 so credit cards were out.
My wife monitored the balance and only kept in a small amount, and would add more as needed.
She also took one of my wife’s (no, Autocorrect, it’s not wives’ ) CC as well. That card requires a number sent to the owner’s phone so it was just for special purchases.
A few months ago, my wife noticed a bunch of charges from Apple.
There was a huge mess trying to get things disputed and refunded.
It looks like there card was compromised by a legitimate purchase through Apple, and the hacker continued to make various purchases from in different countries and such.
When she looked online, at least in Japan, Apple gets compromised often.
Not really ranting, more baffled:
Is there a rational reason that a package being sent US Postal from Illinois to California was routed through New York?
I was tracking a package from Georgia to Tennessee a couple of months ago. Three times did it land in Nashville and then get routed up to New York where it would sit (in the lost mail pile I suppose) for two or three days. It would get sent back t Nashville only to start the cycle again.
It was weird.
Some a-hole either directed or parked a barge, with a crane on it, at the end of the pier totally screwing up the shot from a prior year. It’s not like it’s a once-a-year opportunity or something 