September 23, 2011 in WTF?!?!??! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
My buddy James is deathly afraid of sharks. On an almost weekly basis I like to post some shark story on his Facebook wall or a video from YouTube about a shark attack or close encounter to keep it fresh in his mind. I mean, I need to remind him to be ever vigilant: you can never let your guard down or you will be eaten, right? I mean, even in lakes, streams, and rivers...Bull Sharks can swim and leave in any kind of water. For a very, very long time. Indefinitely even.
But I digress.
I hate snowmen. Irrational? Sure. Well placed fear? Of course. These fuckers can grow as big as they want, regenerate, and just when you think they are dead, bam, they come back.
And they can multiple.
See what I am mean??? Fightening shit.
Way more frightening than a damn shark. Pffffffft.
February 10, 2011 in WTF?!?!??! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
It's quite an amazing thing that happens when your debit card is compromised and your checking account is not only emptied but in the negative by almost $3000.
It's not like I needed any more examples of why my friends and coworkers were the greatest bunch of people on the planet, but offers to help have been unabated since New Years Day.
But I did need just one example of why my bank has it's best interest at heart for me to wake up.
Rewind to New Years Day - I was running my 1 mile race downhill that I do every year and 1/4 of the way done I knew I was in deep shit. My lower back started seizing up on me and the rest is history. All you need to know about that race you can see in the picture below.
Just look at the time on the clock, my face, and take a glance at the two little girls to my right. Runner #803 barely looks like she even ran. We finished at the same time. She is like 7 years old. I'm 30. And sadly wearing a shirt that proclaims that Athletes Run. Obviously #803 and #554 are fine athletes. But I digress.
The Niff was at the bottom of the hill and was telling me about an email confirmation she got on her Blackberry for purchasing commuter rail tickets in Helsinki.
Full disclosure: we don't live in Finland. We've never been to Helsinki. We both work in Concord, New Hampshire.
I told her it was likely spam, but she said she got two emails.
Odd.
We called our bank, Citizen's Bank, to tell them about it and they said that someone did in fact purchase that on our debit card. Three times. For $1042 each.
Here enters the first of many flaws in their system: we purchased coffee for the Niff prior to my race, in New Hampshire, around 12:00pm. The tickets were purchased in Helsinki at 1:30pm. We also don't know of any portals that could get us to Finland in 90 minutes.
Flaw #1: Why didn't their system immediately flag and stop our card from being used?
We talked to the Fraud Department, who happened to call us while we were on the phone with the bank. Proactive? Nope. Reactive? Not really, since we are the ones that called first.
My question to the bank was why they didn't call us to verify such large purchases. In the past we've been flagged for anything over $600 and on one notable occasion got a phone call from our bank while we were still in line at IKEA to make sure we didn't lose our card since we usually don't purchase that much stuff at once.
We were told that it was the holiday and the weekend and the Fraud Monitoring Department was off for the holiday.
Wait, what? Oh yeah, because thieves take the holidays and weekends off too. I forgot.
Flaw #2: Why wasn't a call made to us, even after the first purchase?
Flaw #3: Holidays and weekends? Seriously???
We were told they were debit purchases, which meant we needed to wait until the transactions cleared before we could take action. We asked the bank to stop the purchases, they said they couldn't do that.
At this point, Citizens Bank knew that someone had our card. All they did was cancel the Niff's card. They were not able to stop a pending transaction. For real?
Flaw #4: We were told by the person on the phone we had to wait for our account to basically be emptied before we could do anything, but rest assured, they usually could get the money back in within 48 hours of us going to a branch and signing an affidavit.
Saying we were helpless is an understatement. We went home, I logged onto our online banking and saw even more transactions that were slated to come out. We could do nothing.
But I did.
I fucking paid every single bill I could as fast as I possibly could, even a month in advance because I knew the shitstorm that was coming. I couldn't pay my rent in time or my car payment, because I write checks for them but dammit if I was going to have the rest of our account leached out from under us when the bank sat on their hands and did jack shit for us.
So we waited. Until the transactions cleared. Then we went to the bank. We were told there that it would take 5-10 business days to get money back in the account.
Wait, what?? We were told 48 hours.
Wrong. 5 days minimum. Not 5 days from when we called them to report fraud on our account but 5 business days from when we signed some paperwork.
Ok...well...how come it takes 5 business days? Citizens Bank has branches that are open on Saturday and Sunday, I mean, that's why they are my bank. Because I can go there every day of the week. So, those should count, because it's their business days, right?
Of course not.
Flaw #5: When someone tells you that you'll have your life back in 48 hours, actually mean 48 hours.
Flaw #6: In issues of fraud, perhaps you should count the weekends. This goes back to Flaw #3. Staff your organization so this happens less and in the event it does that people can get their lives back together even faster. Dipshits.
We went on our lives the best way we could. We have been taking cash from our savings and buying groceries, charging whatever we need to knowing we'll eventually have a checking account to pay it off immediately.
I called the other day to check on the status of it as it was the 5th business day. Ahhh that magic number! 5 business days!!!
"Sir, it takes 10-14 business days."
Flaw #7: When you say 48 hours, then 5 business days, then 10 business days I will never believe you ever again and will never trust you with my money. Plus you better be prepared to pay my medical bills when I hear that bullshit and have a stroke.
I was at work when I was told this. I'm thankful I have understanding people where I work. Everyone I work with in general is awesome, the people that work in my immediate vicinity are nothing short of saints. In fact I'm applying to the Catholic Church for sainthood for them after this is all finished.
Because I lost my fucking mind.
I let the woman on the phone know that in no uncertain times that my life was fucked up because of this and the longer it goes on the worse it gets. She didn't give a shit.
"I'm sorry sir."
"You aren't sorry, don't say you are. My life is on hold until you guys make good on this. We did nothing wrong. We in fact called you to tell you our account was compromised. We signed an affidavit. If you find that I am lying please by all means put me in jail. Do you realize I had to ask my rental office to hold my rent check? That I have a new car I need to pay for but my checks are worthless right now? And you guys keep lying to me, telling me it will be 48 hours, then 5 days, now 10? Are you kidding me? How would a family of 5 get by? Don't you get it? You DON'T. I've had an account with you guys for 17 years now, I opened up a savings account when I first moved to this state when I was 13. 17 loyal years of business. And there is nothing you can do? Well, there's something I can and will do. I'm going to move all of my business to a local credit union. I'm going to warn friends and family about Citizens Bank. I'm going to warn them that they aren't as safe as they think they are. I'm going to use every chance I get to tell people the truth about Citizens Bank. And I hope that what I tell them helps even one person. And I hope that you actually take note of the flaws of your system that I've outlined and that you fix them. Because no one should have to go through this. Ever. Someone stole part of our lives and you don't seem to care. Thanks."
And it went on. And on. I asked for this woman's supervisor, told her the same thing and she told me the same thing, "I'm sorry". I told her that she has no idea what I'm going through unless this has happened to her. She told me she would call me when the money is back in the account. I laughed, I told her I've been checking it 20 times a day online and she can feel free to call but much like the fraud on our account I would find out before the call was made.
The Niff found out from UConn (her Alma Mater) that their school store was compromised and credit card/debit card information could have been taken. Usually you never find out where and how, but we did. Is it all because of the attention that UConn got for the women winning 90 games in a row? Because some douchebag hacker across the pond saw UConn on the news every fucking night for a month? And they figured, "Shit, I bet they are selling a ton of merchandise, this might be a great hack...". Who knows. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it was compromised from within.
Bottomline as far as debit purchases online - don't do it. Use a credit card that has fraud protection. Trust me. If you don't have one get one and if you can't get one don't do it. It isn't worth the living hell you can go through.
Citizens Bank had many opportunities here to make things right. They didn't. I hope this opens people's eyes. I hope it educates people. I hope that things change because of it. The optimist in me says a lot of good can happen out of this. The realist tells me nothing will change.
Tragic.
January 13, 2011 in The Niff, Things That Piss Me Off, WTF?!?!??! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
That's right. I keep track of my food so I know how I am doing. Normally I do pretty well but I'm a fat kid that can't say no to cake.
Technically I should have put it in the breakfast area, but Morning Snack is considered 2nd Breakfast to me. Guesstimating on the size, but for fuck's sake it's cake for breakfast.
Number 1 reason why I bought www.fatkidslovecake.com...
September 21, 2010 in WTF?!?!??! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
BUT WHAT THE FUCK.
It's almost like it was two totally different stories. It's so fucking distracting. I guess i should be happy because every scene is new to me...?
February 23, 2010 in Movies, The Niff, WTF?!?!??! | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
What I am about to tell you is something that I am confident will never be witnessed again in my lifetime. Or yours. It's the type of event that happens maybe once every few lifetimes.
When I was 6 I saw Hailey's Comet. My mom and dad told me that if I lived another 76 years I could see it again. I'm willing to bet that I will have the unique opportunity of seeing Hailey's Comet twice in a lifetime but am willing to bet everything that I will never witness what I saw at lunch yesterday ever again.
I was at lunch at Dos Amigos in downtown Concord around lunchtime with a buddy from work. I lost a bet about a month ago - I took the Pats to beat the Ravens and I was sorely disappointed so it was time to pay up.
We ordered our lunches and plopped down at the lunch bar that faces Main Street. It was sunny, about 40 degrees out, it was a pretty nice day. About 10 feet in front of us a woman pulled up to the curb, stepped over the snowbank and proceeded to turn her back to us and pump quarters into the meter.
Again - it's lunchtime, it's busy as hell all around downtown Concord, people are everywhere.
We're talking about God knows what and we're looking out the window when we both see this woman's pants fall down around her ankles. Now, I don't mean they sorta dropped down a bit or were sagging, I mean, they were around her fucking ankles.
Normally I would be like "whoa man, that sucks!" as a person hurries up and pulls them back up, hoping no one noticed.
But that didn't happen.
You see, she kept feeding the meter, pants around her ankles for a good 15-20 seconds before proceeding to pick them up and proceed on her merry way.
To say we were blown away would never do it justice. A woman who I think either owns or manages Dos Amigos was on her Macbook behind us, on a cell phone, and had the same reaction as we did.
"OMFG, do you know what I just saw??? This lady standing in front of the restaurant had her pants fall down and she didn't even care!"
I wish we could have waited out the 90 minutes on her meter and hit her with 20 questions but we couldn't. I'll always wonder.
If I wasn't there and someone told me the story I probably wouldn't believe them. But dammit. What the fuck. I won't be forgetting February 18, 2010 anytime soon.
Like Nick said, "We'll always have Dos Amigos".
February 19, 2010 in Food and Drink, Funny ass shit, Random things I love, WTF?!?!??! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I was checking out CNN earlier today and saw this:
Really? This is news? In fact, this is worthy of being the main story on CNN? It's fucking winter. What do people expect??? When it's winter, it's colder. Sometimes it snows. When it's windy it feels a lot colder than it really is. Did the entire country skip over this in elementary school?
January 06, 2010 in Call Me Stupid But..., WTF?!?!??! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
An otherwise awesome weekend comprised of going to the Hopkinton Fair, exploring a corn maze that had Boston trivia answers hidden inside, and an exploratory adventure of sorts was marred by someone that doesn't realize that we live in a society. Where there are rules. And repercussions for their actions.
So there we were (all great stories start this way): doing our laundry in our laundry room where we live that has two washers and four giant dryers. One washer was empty so I put my stuff in it. One was stopped with a basket on top. Now, people routinely leave their clothes in the washers and don't care about anyone else or their urgency to do laundry. They'll leave them in there for hours. I did the logical thing: I took out the clothes and put them in the basket on the washer. And put in the Niff's clothes.
We come back as soon as our timer goes off and we get our stuff. Because the dryers crank up the heat and destroy our clothes we hang them up on clothes racks. As the Niff is putting her stuff on her rack she realizes she can't find a piece of clothing. She looks all over the apartment, walks back to the laundry room, finds nothing. She keeps hanging and realizes she is missing a lot more than she thought.
What.The.Fuck.
The person that had their clothes taken out by yours truly took probably at least 1/4 to 1/2 of the Niff's laundry: running shorts, sports bras, panties, shirts, you name it.
And they did it because I took their shit out of the washer.
I mean, I realize I crossed major boundaries here touching your shit, almost Hatfield and McCoy type reasons to start shooting each other. But seriously?? Stealing someone's clothes because they touched your sheets.
It's more than fucked up, it's criminal. And because I've watched way too many episodes of CSI I am getting to the bottom of it. For real. I've already turned my recliner around to face the parking lot and dumpster. Anyone that goes near it that looks suspicious is on my suspect list. Because of my uber-Hardy Boy skills I have it narrowed down to a family that has a little boy which could be one of two families the live in the floor below us, one directly beneath us.
I know what their laundry basket looks like and I'm on a mission. It might take a week. A month. A year. But I will figure it out. Oh yes, I will.
September 08, 2009 in The Niff, Things That Piss Me Off, Unbelievable People, WTF?!?!??! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
In a move to force the monopolostic hand that is Comcast, the NFL Network has decided to pull it's channel from the Comcast lineup as of May 1st. Comcast decided to push the NFL Network into their Sports Tier Package, which costs subscribers sometimes as much as $15 a month to watch one of the best sports networks on TV. The NFL Network has always stood by it's fans and has tried to get Comcast to do what is the right thing - put it in the normal Basic Tier Package and allow the masses (up to 2 million more Comcast subscribers) to get the NFL Network for free. This is a big deal because when Thanksgiving rolls around every single week after that there are games that are put on the NFL Network that you normally wouldn't get to see. For NFL fans, one more game is a huge deal.
April 04, 2009 in My not-so-little Soapbox, Things That Piss Me Off, WTF?!?!??! | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)