I've never tried writing a blog post while mad before. Frustrated maybe, but never mad. And I'm down right pissed off at the moment. So, maybe I can blow off some steam and have some verbal fun while I'm at it. Bear with me (and try to be entertained).
The background:
About three years ago I decided to start keeping track of my finances in great detail - more than just balancing my check book. I started keeping records of every dollar I spent, cash, check or credit card. ("Isn't that painfully tedious, annoying AND boring?" the reader asks. No. Thanks to my particular neural wiring diagram I love it. I enjoy being meticulous, I have fun recording data and when I can use my records to make cool little projections and graph thingies, all the better!) Last December (2 months ago), I decided to upgrade my methodology from trying to record everything in Microsoft Excel, using instead some free accounting software I found for my Linux operating system Ubuntu - the open source equivalent of Microsoft Quicken, I believe. (I'll sing the praises of open source software in some other blog post.) Now I very efficiently keep track of every single cent I spend or earn and am prompted to cross check my e statements with my recorded account balances. Back track.
Last August I was going over a credit card statement to discover the source of a $15 discrepancy. What I found was some bogus charge from some bogus company somewhere in New England. After calling Visa to dispute the charge I was told I had to first contact the charging company. Now there's an idea... I'll have some things to say to them... Remarkably, I kept a very civil tongue in talking to the company rep. (he sounded like he was from India). As soon as I mentioned that I had never heard of the company and was rather annoyed, he offered to refund the money to my account. In fact, it was blatantly obvious that the company was bogus and that this was the protocol for the scamees who noticed their little games. This is how they play: Somehow (Through spy-ware? It's unclear to me.) they access your credit card information. Then they charge a small amount of money to your account on a monthly basis, sit back and hope you don't realise what they're up to. And if you find out, they refund the money and hope you don't sue. After all, why would you sue? You are getting all of your money back, no matter how pissed you are. And even if only %15 of us are chumps (I'm sure it's much more than that, as it is very difficult to catch even if you don't have very many items charged to your credit card AND you keep meticulous financial records AND you regularly check your credit card statements, if briefly.) That's still quite a bit of income, especially considering the low overhead of having a computer program doing the stealing and having people in India answering the calls. Anyway, I got over it. And that was last August.
The Present:
Today I was catching up on my finance records. A mundane chore, but I don't mind. Also, I decided that it might be a good time to get caught up on reconciling my bank and credit card statements with my personal records. Fun fun fun. My January bank statement checked out to the cent (man is that satisfying). And perhaps that is why I was curious when my credit card statement and my personal records of credit card spending were exactly one dollar off - to my detriment. I needed to change address information anyway, so I logged into my account to investigate. $26.14 for gas, $14.15 for groceries... things were checking out. Still a dollar discrepancy. I scanned my statement once more and there it was. "MVQ*CLUBSAVE 888-239-3917 CT - $1.00" I knew it immediately for what it was. A scam. And this time I had experience with *people* like these. This meant that I knew what to do. And that I had a special place in the Pure Loathing And Resentment section of my heart, all nice and warmed up for them.
I called the 800 number posted by the charge. Time to refute! But these f***ers (At risk for sounding crude or offensive, I think I can safely defend my use of the term by pointing out that within the age demographic that most internet scammers fall into (I think 20+ years old is safe), I bet there's a good %70-80 chance that they've had sex at least once in their lifetime. And as there don't exist such words as 'sexual intercoursers' or 'love-makers'... I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I may sound vulgar, perhaps I'm merely referring to the humanity of these scheming bastards by calling attention to commonalities they share with a vast majority of the rest of the world, which happens to have plenty of good people in it.) had a very clever answering system in place. In order to (maybe?) talk to a real person I had to enter my account number (Hmm, never signed up. Don't have one.), enter my phone number (didn't work - not in the system. Huh.) or enter my credit card number (Do they still think that I'm stupid, having gotten this far in unveiling their scheme?). The machine expressed its sympathies in not being able to help me at the present moment and gave me a very helpful email address to contact. And contact I did while doing my best to restrain my Angry Language. In my email, I requested a full refund for stolen funds, a confirmation notice and that they remove my information from their system. Hopefully they'll get on that. I'm still pissed. Pissed that I'd been had. Again. And had been getting had for seven months. And mostly I'm pissed at the cleverness of their scam. Not only are they stealing money from innocent unwitting people like me but they are essentially safeguarded from retaliation. Sure I'm pissed, but I'm not going to hire a lawyer with money I don't have to shut down their little scam. And neither is the next guy. And they'll just keep cashing in. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
So this is my attempt at one small iota of retribution. I am letting off steam during this writing process and I'M WARNING YOU, YES YOU! of these types of schemes. They're out there. I've been had twice already. I'm not an opponent of buying things with credit cards on the internet - frankly, eBay, Amazon and other online stores are pretty amazing and convenient. But I would praise the recording of spending. Or, if keeping meticulous notes isn't your cup of tea, AT LEAST do yourself the favour of carefully examining your monthly credit card statements, especially if you have ever used the accounts to purchase anything online. These guys are sneaky. They generally charge small amounts ($1.oo in this case) that are hardly noticeable, and they have cute little names like "MVQ*CLUBSAVE." If you don't keep records or save receipts, you can still call to dispute questionable charges and at the worst you can apologise to the totally legitimate business you forgot you purchased from. I for one am going to be much more diligent in checking statements.
...
Yep, still mad. I think this post helped a little, though.
oh, matthew. so angry, and yet so willing to humanize the Other.
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