I'm In 2 Places At One Time

So I stopped to get some gas last night for a $1.95/gallon. The pay at the pump machine didn't seem to be working so I just pressed the "pay inside" button instead of moving to another pump and filled up. I figured the machine was being overworked with the falling gas prices finally back below $2 so it was no big deal for me to walk a few feet to pay inside.

I finished filling up, went inside to pay with my debit/credit card and was denied there too. Great, I thought. The card is starting to look a little worn so I looked at the strip on the back to see if there were any scratches or worn spots. Visibly it looked alright so the clerk tried it again. Still no go, he was telling me the card was "unauthorized". Yeah, like I don't have authority to use my own card.

I tried it in the ATM quick and got the same message there. WTF?!?! I couldn't even get it to give me just my balance so I could prove to the clerk I had the $$.

Thankfully I was able pay the old fashioned way so I wrote a check and that was that. I thought later that what if he wouldn't have accepted a check? Would I have had to clean the bathrooms until I worked off $30 worth of gas or would I have had to siphon it out? Glad those little pieces of paper are still being accepted somewhere!

So when I got home last night I pulled up my account online. Turns out there were 5 debit card transactions on there from Houston, TX made yesterday. Someone, somehow, somewhere had gotten a hold of my card # and fraudulently made 4 separate purchases at Best Buy and 1 at BeBe's. I'm not sure, but I think BeBe's is a women's department store. I am sure that I wasn't in TX yesterday and if I was I wouldn't be shopping at Best Buy and BeBe's! Thankfully this little inbred didn't wrack up too much in purchases, $283 total, but still....

I went to my credit union this morning to straighten things out and they assured me that should be the last of those transactions. The Visa system, or someone, had noticed these unusually transactions and stopped all electronic payments on my account, hence why I wasn't able to use it at the gas station. It's nice to know that fraud alert system works!

When I was at the credit union and we were going through the transactions for the past couple of days the service rep was asking me about recent purchases in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin that were showing up too. Those were from my marathon weekend trip, but I bet I could've gotten away with telling her those were unauthorized too and I would've been reimbursed. Damn! I guess this is where I'm supposed to say thanks Mom and Dad for raising me to be an honest and forthright individual (yeah yeah, I know some of you are questioning that too).