Skype can work with your Facebook account and use your contacts and some other information but if you want it to you need to give it access to...well...you're entire identity.
Oh, so you can randomly post shit on my wall? Videos too? Oh let me hurry up and do that...
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.
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.
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...
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?
People are finally starting to calm down about this swine flu crap. About damn time. It's gotten out of hand. Only 1 person in our country died from it, a stark contrast to the thousands that die from the flu every year. It didn't scare me for a second.
For real.
