Vacations! (part 1)

Needless to say it appears that the main vacation I’ve taken is one from taking care of this blog. I realize it is somewhat sad to neglect something as therapeutic as writing from one’s mind and heart, but alas…. I am guilty of that.

However, to sorta give you the short run down …We escaped in March to a gathering of innkeepers up in Massachusetts. It was a short, but much needed escape as it is among the dead time of our tourism market here in the high mountains of NC. While there, we closed the wine shop, and forwarded our phones to the cell phones. We’ve neglected replacement of our dilapidated laptops and instead opted for the iPhones as they are computer capable it seems. Well, while at this gathering, a phone call comes in for a very healthy wine order… of which there was no way to  price out without being in the shop.

Hence, upon our return to the sleepy little village of Blowing Rock I emailed the gentleman the pricing and shipping information. He readily replied for an order well into the thousands of dollars with his credit card information inclusive of that little three digit code on the back of the card. I went ahead and ran the card; and as I hit that little “OK” button on our system both Scott and I had a gut wrenching feeling that something was simply wrong. I called my merchant bank and had the transaction “frozen” until I could call “VISA” and verify the card.

If you’re one of those who think our bailing the banking system out as taxpayers was a good idea; please keep reading. The guy at the “VISA Hotline” scoffed at me that if I ran the card and it went through there was no issue and I should not be calling them. I hung up and thought, “They ought to know!” Yet, the gut instinct was still there and I called back and asked first up for a supervisor who also spoke to me, as a merchant, as though I were an idiot for calling. At this point I asked for the head of their little toll-free card verification hot line. This lady actually asked me for the”account” (card) number and the street address, the zip code, cvcc number, and the name given for the card…. none of which matched.

RATS

She then transferred me over to the “fraud investigation officer” for the bank where the card was issued. OMG — f-’ing idiot bitch! She actually would not call the rightful cardholder to let them know their card was being used by a thief! Her idea of an investigation was:

1)Have the merchant, me, go to the police department and file a report;

2)Go to a notary public and have the report notarized;

3)Fax her the report on a fax machine that I don’t have and no she wouldn’t take an emailed PDF file,  & yes I did ask;

4)She then would fax a “request for investigation form” back to me on that imaginary fax machine;

5)I would then have to fill that form out, go back to the notary and get it notarized;

and 6) Then fax that form back to her on my imaginary fax machine.

I did some quick math and figured I would spend close to six hours doing that just to get her to call the rightful card owner… mind you that’s six hours I would have to lock the doors and close up my shop guaranteeing no legitimate sales!

I politely told her what I really thought of her bank and that process and declined to participate in such hypocrisy. I then called my merchant bank back and relayed the aforementioned story; they graciously reverted the card charges and did not charge me the standard fees for the transaction and refund!

However, it did take about 4-5 weeks to get things straightened out and receive normal deposits from the merchant bank. I was ok with that as they had covered my ass ina really bad situation. However, my local bank decided to take up to a week to deposit the transfers of cash from my merchant bank as there had been such an issue with the stolen credit card. they are still taking up to 3-4 days to post my deposits. It has been a mess.

My vacation from blogging has been filled with the realization that when dealing with utilities, banks, and such there is one definite rule of thumb that works, “Use short sentences, and small words… usually about four letters.”

Overall, we survived the winter and spring without severe injury. Just the school of hard knocks for a few lessons we should have already known.

Part two of Vacations will soon follow —– I promise!
Shalom (from a Baptist kid!)