How I spent my evening. Last night after sending that post I decided to make an online donation to a worthy cause. I used a credit card - and it was rejected. That's strange My credit card never gets rejected. I know I made the payment online, I saw my online bank statement showing the money had left my checking account. So I called the credit card company. I was given the runaround by some guy I strongly suspect was on the other side of the world, and was given a different 800 number to call. I called it and it was NOT IN SERVICE. Found another number on my online statement, got the runaround from another guy who gave me a different 800 number which was ALSO NOT IN SERVICE. By now I'm furious, so the next live human I caught got an earful. This live human did at least diagnose the problem - they did indeed see that they took my money, but they applied it to an inactive old account, which, get this, they cannot access so they can't get my money back!

SEVEN, that's right, SEVEN phone calls and more than an hour later, the problem still wasn't fixed, and I was told I would have to go to my bank and get them to fax something to the credit card company so they would believe that they took my money. Yes, that's right, I get to run around town getting proof that they fucked up. This was not my mistake. This was their mistake, and even though several so-called "customer service" reps acknowledged that they know what happened, they can't fix it until I send them proof? Needless to say I am closing this account as soon as this is straightened out, and I will compose a poison pen letter to the CEO of Chase, detailing exactly how bad their service was. I'm really mad - I've had this account for years, and normally I pay with a paper check. I've used the online bill pay precisely twice in the past year, and both times this has happened - the money is somehow applied to a "dead" account number that was transferred to them by some other bank. The last time was in November and they fixed it with one phone call, so when it happened again I was annoyed but not overly put out. Now I'm furious - this time they can't fix it in SEVEN calls, and they don't even know their own 800 numbers. Something stinks here.

I am not a novice at online bill-paying, and I was very sure that I had the correct account and account number on-screen when I sent the payment. The screen said yes indeedy, it was going to that account. The money was somehow deflected into a different account. It's still their account, but they can't access it and get the money back and apply it to the correct account? I have to get paper proof of their mistake before they will acknowledge and fix it? So I wonder how many people this happens to, and how many millions of dollars go into this sort of off-the-books float for the bank's use while they run their customers around to straighten it out? It took me a week to find their error, and it'll take me another day at least to fix it. Kinda makes you go hmmmm....

The sleeve of the Lo-Tech Sweat continues. I had to knit a while before I fell asleep last night, to calm down.