Fraudulent Citizen

Wow, 7 whole months without a single blog post! Wonder what could cause me to be re-inspired to post after such a significant hiatus? My wedding? My birthday the day after my wedding? My awesome honeymoon? Nope! This post is lovingly attributed to the person whom I lovingly refer to as "Fraudulent Citizen". Below is a fun account of my adventures in Fraudland!

It all began on a rather normal Friday morning in the Metzger household. The birds chirped, the Metzgers showered, ate and burped, all was well. Until.

7/24/09, 7 AM: Checked email while eating breakfast. Noticed there were several emails fom Paypal thanking me for my purchase of $1,549.99 and congratulations on winning your eBay item, a shiny brand-new Macbook Pro!! Wait...what? Did I buy this online while sleepwalking? Did I unknowingly make the switch from PC to Mac while I slumbered? DARN those commercials and their subliminal advertising techniques. DARN them to HECK!

7/24/09, 7:02 AM: Called Paypal. Asked WTF is going on. Did not say "WTF" except for in my head. Was advised that they were already aware of the fraudulent purchase, which raised red flags left and right all over. Fraudulent Citizen wanted their lovely new Macbook delivered to a remote Wyoming location, of which I captured on google street view. See? Fraudulent Citizen's Shipping Address - What appears to be a home, a warehouse, or an empty field. Yippee. Who could this sneaky Citizen be? Meanwhile, back at Paypal...Sorry, Mrs. Metzger, we couldn't stop the purchase from going through to your bank account. (The bank account that has a zero balance. The bank account that was only open until I was able to switch my company's payroll direct deposit to my new bank. Zoiks!) Maybe, Mrs. Metzger, you could call your bank to explain about the fraudulent purchase, and they can stop it from posting to your account!

7/24/09, 7:10 AM: Called PNC Bank to let them know what was going on. Yippee, looks like the fraudulent purchase was stopped in its tracks! Rep advised that it looks like Paypal was able to stop the transaction. Sigh of relief. Thought to myself: crisis averted! Fraudulent Citizen thwarted! Justice served! Boo-ya! (Yeah...I said it. Boo-ya. Read it and weep, o ye children of the late 90s).

7/24/09, 7:30 AM: On an afterthought, emailed the eBay seller to let them know what was up. Received a thank-you response. At least the Fraudulent Citizen wouldn't get that sweet laptop.

Fast forward to Monday, 7/27/09, 6:10 PM: Received mail sent via USPS, from PNC, addressed to me. Ripped open. "Hello, your account is overdrafted by $1549.99. Please bring your account up to to zero balance and pay us our $31 NSF fee."

7/27/09, 6:20 PM: Called PNC to ask WTF is going on. Remembered to ask more nicely than "WTF". Remembered that my paycheck was going to be deposited into this account in a couple of days. That would suck! Paycheck wouldn't even cover the negative amount in the bank account... leaving me without the $$ until Paypal reversed the transaction. Yay for paying my last 2 weeks of hard-earned money to a fraud-committing citizen who never received the sweet laptop. Spoke to a rep @ PNC who refused to discuss my own account with me because I couldn't remember the exact dollar amount of my last deposit, even though I gave her my SSN, address, date of birth and how much I weighed upon exiting my mother's vagina on June 21st, 1981. Had to hang up after getting nowhere. Felt somehow simultaneously indignant, unclean, nearly in tears, with a rising-up of perverse hilarity.

7/27/09, 10 PM: Called PNC again, this time armed and ready with the information about my most recent deposit. Spoke to a rep at length; claimed they were unable to put a freeze on my account to reject the paycheck being direct deposited. Oh, P.S., Mrs. Metzger - You now owe us $62 in NSF fees, plus $7 a day every day the account is below zero balance. Sure, we can put in a dispute for you - we need to mail you some paperwork. No, we can't fax or email it. Oh, can you verify the amount and date of your last withdrawal from your account? We need to verify your home address and can't mail you anything until you give us that information. I know we sent you a letter telling you there is minus $1549.99 in your account, but we're not authorized to send you a letter to dispute that until you verify your last withdrawal. My last withdrawal?? Surely you jest? Why don't you ask the third-rate hacker who attempted to buy a Macbook Pro on eBay and failed, only succeeding in wasting my time, money and patience?

7/27/09, 10:15 PM: Called PayPal to ask if anything could be done. Was advised the fraud team is still resolving the fraudulent purchase and the transaction would be reversed when resolution process complete - say about 2 weeks or so. *Gulp*

7/28/09, 8 AM: Called PNC local branch office to ask if they could do anything to help. I offered to do conference call w/Paypal so they could assure PNC that all was kosher & the transaction would eventually be reversed to my bank account. Rep told me that in her 14 years of banking experience, has never known a bank account to be placed on a freeze. (!!!) Said she would look into, and call me back. She expressed her shock that Paypal even allowed the purchase to occur. I expressed my shock that PNC would allow $1500 to be removed from an account with a zero balance & NSF fees to be charged against a customer who has a perfect banking relationship with PNC. Ended the shocking call.

7/28/09, 1:30 PM: Did not hear back from PNC rep. Called again and spoke with a different rep. Was advised that even after this process was resolved, PNC probably would not reimburse me the NSF fees, now nearly $100. Why? Oh, you know - it's such a bad economy, Mrs. Metzger. They are really holding onto these fees now. Dude...a bad economy? Should have thought of that before letting the Fraudulent Citizen steal $1549.99 from an honest taxpayer. ROFL.

7/28/09, 7:38 PM: Anger balloon deflated some. Posted this blog, kicked back and smoked a stogie on my back porch while calmly sipping a single malt scotch on the rocks.

Okay, so the last part wasn't true. But if Fraudulent Citizen ever gets caught...I might just do that. Yes, I just might.



Editor's note: The author would like to make it known that Paypal, while seemingly ridiculed in this post, was actually mostly helpful. PNC, on the other hand, was mostly a pain in the rear.

1990 Poetic Attempt

I think it's really funny to read a poem that you wrote in 1990 - one that your parents had proudly saved and then mailed to you randomly some 18 years later. (Thanks, Mom, I got a kick out of this). I actually kind of remember writing this poem and remember being very pleased with myself. Of course, reading it now I can't help but chuckle at my attempt:

What Is Blue?

Blue is the sky,
blue is the waves,
blue is the color of crystal in caves.
blue is the oceans,
blue is the seas,
blue is the bluebird who sings in the trees.

Blue is the color of butterfly wings,
blue is the color of beautiful things.

Blue is a color of our Texas flag.

Blue is the color of balloons in a bundle,
blue is the color of ooze in a bottle.

Blue is a name of music, as I hear it,
the sound drifts away, in beauty.

Wow. Grammatical errors aside, did you know that the word "bundle", when you're a 9-year-old, rhymes with the word "bottle"? And that the inclusion of the Texas flag in ANY poem adds a certain je ne sais quoi? Also, I'm not sure WHAT in the world I was imagining with regard to the "ooze in a bottle". I mean, we had some pretty interesting Girl Scouts experiments but I don't recall glowing blue ooze in a bottle. Maybe its radioactivity brainwashed my childhood memories. How about the quasi-delusional idea that there is, somewhere out there, a cave filled with lovely blue crystals? I sure would love to visit such a place. Maybe next time I'm in Narnia I could check that out.

The Mighty Q-tip

Something kind of funny happened this morning. I was cleaning out my ears with Q-tips, same thing I have done every day for the last 15 or so years. This time, however, as I improperly inserted the Q-tip into my inner ear canal, something I have also done every day for the last 15 years, the Q-tip end stayed inside my inner ear canal upon Q-tip extraction. I stared dumbly at the naked end of the Q-tip for a moment, contemplating the embarrassment of explaining to the staff in the E.R. that an incompetent 27-year old has just jammed a Q-tip into her ear and was unable to get it out. It's one thing if you're a quirky 5-year old child who is experimenting with the number of peas that can be inserted into various bodily orifices, but quite another to be a (quasi-)functional adult doing the same. Not that I was shoving Q-tips anywhere else but my ears, of course. Hey, this is a g-rated blog, people!

Anyway, I walked around my apartment for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do. When I moved my jaw around, there was a kind of a muffled squish sensation in my left ear and I heard everything through more of a fuzz than usual. I was suddenly really glad that I had health insurance in case the doctors discovered that I had jammed the Q-tip right into my brain. And then I would have cotton fuzz floating around in my cerebral cortex! And then the surgeons had to perform a risky brain surgery to save my life! No, seriously though, it was kind of funny. I propped up one mirror to another mirror to see if the Q-tip was visible in my ear - to no avail. It had disappeared into the chasm.

Suddenly, I thought of my tweezers! I made a bargain with myself. ONE TRY, and if I couldn't get it out, Chris and I would grab a couple of good books and spend a long, pleasurable afternoon waiting in the E.R. while the doctors first attended to those with real emergencies. I carefully inserted the tweezers into my inner ear canal (when will I ever learn?? 'Cause when you jam one thing into your ear, the perfect solution is to jam another thing into your ear to get the first thing out.)

So, dearest reader, I am sure you're on the edge of your seat with excited anticipation, awaiting the climax of the story. Can I have a drum rollllll please?

SUCCESS! E.R. trip avoided! Embarrassment saved! Q-tip lesson learned! All this without one single second of panic. I feel endlessly wiser than I did pre-Q-tip-insertion.

Typical.

A nice family photo, made better by a certain someone's insanity.
It must be contagious, because the next pic I snapped looked like this: