Archive for the ‘Nonclassified Nonsense’ Category

Back in 2000, I opened a First Union account in Georgia.  First Union was a great little bank with excellent customer service, and I never had a problem with them.  Then, First Union was purchased by Wachovia.  I had a few issues with Wachovia, but they were minimal.  Then, after the financial sector collapse, Wachovia was purchased by Wells Fargo.

At this news, I contemplated switching banks, but it seemed like more trouble than it would be worth.  I try to do most of my banking with ING, but they’ve since been bought by CapitalOne, so I’m sure they’ll be headed downhill soon, and Joanna’s gets paid in paper checks, so it’s convenient to have a real bank nearby.

Today I discovered a dozen fraudulent charges on my Wells Fargo account.  Thanks to detailed reporting, I can tell that these are debit card transactions, mostly to Singapore-based company that sells pre-paid phone minutes.  I suspect that these minutes can be converted into cash and/or easily transferred.

This happens all the time, but the interesting thing is this: I have never, not even once, used this debit card.  It is still in my possession.  This means it was undoubtedly compromised in some way internal to Wells Fargo.  They, of course, insist there are “lots of ways” that my card could be stolen, but not if I’ve never used it.  This sort of incompetence by Wells Fargo is astounding to me.

My solution for the moment has been to disallow them from issuing me a new debit  card.  I have no use for one anyway.  I never use it for precisely this reason: should it be compromised, I’m out of the money until Wells Fargo decides to give it back to me.  Unlike a credit card where I can simply refuse to pay them.

Instead, I managed to convince them to issue me an ATM-only card.  It’s far from foolproof, but there’s no reason to authorize debit card transactions I never use, and an ATM-only card could not have been used in this manner.  Sure, ATM cards can be skimmed and cloned, but I suspect ATM fraud occurs a lot less frequently than debit card fraud.

Berck drifted off and then when I rolled over started the following conversation:

Berck: Do you know what MUNIX stands for?

Jonah: Unix?

Berck: MUNIX. Multiuser. He tries but he’s not very good at it.

Me: Who?

Berck: Shawn. Shawn David, they’re all named Shawn.

Me: Shawn?

Berck: Creamy rice, Jonah. Creamy rice.

The semester has started, and I’m already dreading going to class. It’s just a few months, and I’m sure I’ll get through it, but it feels like there’s quite the mountain to climb between now and graduation. All of my classes involve various semester-long projects. And most of them are group projects. Just the sort of thing I hate.

The potentially good news is that it looks like I’m going to back to work for Mesa. I’ve got a May 7th class date. This isn’t ideal since that’s my first day of final exams. Fortunately, all my professors agreed that given the circumstances, I can take my finals a week early. This is going to make for a substantially difficult semester ending, with all the projects due at the same time, but it’s worth it if I can go back to work.

The other frustrating thing about this semester is my schedule. I’ve got 4 classes in a row, with no breaks, from 3:05pm – 8:30pm. It makes for a long day.

Berck: I dreamed that you worked at Walgreens, and I needed an ATM, and you said, “You can use this one here.” But instead of a screen it was like a vending machine where you could see all of the items available. So I picked what looked like a basket of dollar bills, but when it all dumped out, there were some British pounds, some gold airplanes that were each worth $63, a menorah starter set, a book on the history of gelt, and all this other stuff. I asked you what to do, and you said I could insert the British pounds into this other ATM, but of course the airplanes wouldn’t fit. And then you said, “Why did you get the grab bag?!” And you were so mad at me.

All together, much better than I was expecting. Brings my GPA down to a 3.968. I’ll deal.