I've been frustrated by the cost of glasses, as you know. I know I have a "large" prescription which necessitates thicker lenses. But "sales" are not "sales" when the only thing on "sale" is the frame and I don't give a rat's patoot about saving 50% on a $75 frame. That's not going to get the cost of glasses down.
So, I get my JCPenney bill yesterday and there is a flyer for 2 pair of glasses for $99 INCLUDING no-line bifocals. "There has to be a catch," thinks I, but I should go see. There was a catch. The selection is limited and, because I work on the computer, no-line bifocals will cause me problems with reading.
Therefore, I have to get progressive lenses. I know what this does. It jacks up the price exponentially. I told the gal that price is the biggest issue in purchasing glasses. If the price isn't good, I won't buy glasses. She understood.
I found a couple pair I liked and we priced them out. Folks, I am getting TWO pair of glasses for $254, including tax. This is $10 LESS than anywhere I'd been able to find for ONE pair, without taxes. I don't want fancy lenses; just give me some which meet my script.
They should be here next week.
I did not have to dip into my Disney fund to get these. I could put the purchase on my JCPenney card. I am still paying off the fridge, which I got during at no-interest for 18 months promotion. The fridge will be paid off in May, way ahead of the 18-month ending. If I take a couple months to pay off the glasses, I'm still way ahead and puts these much, much cheaper than any place I'd found.
An additional benefit is qualifying for the "frequent buyer" program which rewards people with a coupon based on how much they spend. It's been a good year for that, for me. I'll have another coupon to use, thanks to this purchase. I need a fitted sheet to go with the flat sheet I have, but Penneys doesn't have any kind of selection. I'll have to go to Bed, Bath and Beyond for something like that.
The other financial shock of the week was a rate increase on my car insurance. I get that my rates would go up when I bought the Malibu. But when I opened the notice I get telling me State Farm would be deducting x amount from my account on the 28th, the rate had gone up $12. This put it over $100 a month. Shocked, I called my agent. He could not give me a reason for the increase. "Well, you did buy a newer car," he stammered. "Rates go up for a time until the car gets beyond a certain age, then they go down." Wha...? This is a 2011 we're discussing here, not a 2016. I don't have any tickets and have not been in an accident. Why is my rate going up? Realizing I wasn't going to get a straight answer, I thanked him and decided I needed to look around.
Now, I equate buying insurance with the same noxiousness of buying a car. I can't help feel that, if the person selling me insurance had better skills, they wouldn't be selling insurance. I know that's not true and if they didn't sell insurance, there would be really smarmy people who would, but I've felt talked down to by agents so my opinion of them is low. This increase forced me out of my comfort zone to check online for rates. My rates had been going up by a dollar or two a month. This put the effective rate increase at 18% since buying the Malibu in July. There is just not a justification for it.
Well, Progressive is always touting their low rates, let's look. I didn't go anywhere else. I'm saving 50% on my car insurance. Between now and September, that's an additional $300 in my pocket; in my Disney savings. It's the exact same coverage. Plus, Progressive is insuring the house. That rate went down $20. "We have an $80,000 replacement guarantee," the agent said. I looked around my house. I don't have $80,000 worth of stuff I'd want replaced, but that's nice to know.
I've been in a private funk since trying to find glasses. It has colored this whole month. How can I make the ends meet when there's always something I have to throw money at to fix? Life has a way of forcing me out of my comfort zone and that is, sometimes, good for me.
JCP is closing 138 stores around the country as the retail industry deals with a massive customer shift in how they shop. I'm one of those who has shifted to doing more online than in brick and mortar stores. The "mall" concept is dying. I enjoy poking around in downtowns with mom and pop stores instead of the mall and I do a lot of shopping online. It's not unexpected that JCP is facing this reality by closing stores.
There is laughter at JCP, too. "Old fogey store", I've heard it called. Well, this old fogey bought a fridge in the perfect size for me and now glasses from JCP. Finding glasses has made my day and my whole month.
For those of us in certain income brackets, issues which need money thrown at them seem to crop up in clusters. I'm going through one right now and it has me frustrated. Bear with me while I, more or less, vent.
I made a decision last year to celebrate my World of Warcraft guild's 10th anniversary at Disney World with a bunch of guild mates. I made a budget to enable saving for that event only to have said budget blow apart by the sewer backing up at the same time the blower on the furnace decided to work only 50% of the time. I am grateful I had some kind of savings to fix both problems, but those emergencies set me way back. I redid the budget and worried that I would need to cut way to the bone, once again, in order to make this trip, on which I had placed a deposit back in September, a reality.
An acquaintance, who is even less of an acquaintance after this, (She's a friend of a friend so I can legitimately avoid her.) was at a lunch with my friend who inquired as to the state of my sewer. Gotta admit, "Can you flush your toilet now without it backing up into the basement?" is lovely lunch conversation. I mentioned getting both things fixed but having to use my Disney fund for this. This woman, whom I have met twice before, and I can tell you where I was, such was the impression she made, said, "Seriously, you're bitching about having to use savings for Disney to fix house problems? Do you know how many people can't even dream about going to Disney and you're bitching about having a 'set back'?" and she made those air quotes when she said "set back".
I pride myself on not letting things get to me. Life hasn't been kind but I've learned to roll with the punches. If I get called out on something, I look at the comment to see if there is any truth to what they are saying.
I've put money down on this. It means a great deal to me. I know there are people, probably in my neighborhood, who struggle for mac and cheese on a Tuesday night and hold no illusions about getting anywhere near the mouse house. But this is my life and my money and her comment reeks of jealousy and self-righteousness. As I type this, I can see the glare in her eye as she looked at me. My friend said, "Yeah, it sucks when you're saving for something and emergencies strike." The woman muttered, "Heh. Disney is not an emergency."
Fast forward to February. if I could, I would be just like Ned Flanders in "The Trouble With Trillions" episode.
If it were possible to get all the paperwork I need AND have the IRS accept returns early, I'd be doing my taxes on New Year's Day. My feeling is if I get a refund, I want it now. If I owe money, I need to know so I can save and send it in on time. But, institutions are terrible, it seems to me, about sending out financial forms so I don't always have everything until the end of January. Therefore, it's about mid-February when I sit down to do the deed. This year, I got enough back to pay for the bulk of my October Disney trip. I stuffed that straight into the savings account. "I'm not going to touch that," I told myself. "That's for Disney." Or so I thought.
Enter life.
A year ago, I got new glasses with my tax refund.
I had an eye doctor appointment in early February. It's a yearly thing now because of my RA. I have RA-induced rosacea of the eye. It just means my eyes are prone to drying out, which makes them itchy and red. Then the cornea can get scratched more easily. I'm to use artificial tears four times a day. I'm not very good on the remembering to do that part. It's a rare day when I put in drops four times. Usually I remember three times.
Anyway, I noticed, in December, my eyesight had deteriorated just a bit. Some things, particularly in the distance, are blurry or have a blurred edge to them. This was verified in the eye exam so I need new glasses. This will be the third year in a row my prescription has changed. I may have to get used to the idea this is my reality; a minor change every year.
So, I set out to find new glasses. It's a racket. I've purchased glasses online from Coastal.com for the last 3 years. I was able to get good deals, but I dislike the frames Coastal has this year, plus, they are more expensive. Wandered over to another place, Zenni Optical. Their prices were better than Coastal but their frames were no better looking. Then I found a place called Glasses USA.
Here I found a couple pair I liked and, initially, their prices looked very good. Then you get into actually purchasing glasses and their "Glasses $95 including lenses" goes down the tube. I have to get bifocals, which cost more. When a company says, "Glasses $95 including lenses", that's what I expect to pay with additions like tax and shipping. They offered a 50-65% discount but that was only on frames and didn't apply if you picked a frame on sale. The costs kept adding up until I was way over what I wanted to pay for glasses. They have a 3-month payment plan, but they put a hold on your funds for the full amount. That's not a payment plan. So, I told them I was severely disappointed in all the wording on their site and will be taking my business elsewhere. They have told me to call them because they have a "deal" for me. No thanks.
But the big kicker is the lack of liquid funds to even get glasses. Oh sure, I have Disney money. I could easily afford glasses IF I pillaged my Disney fund. There is another online glasses company, Warby Parker, who advertises more realistically, "Glasses FROM x". But they are much more expensive and I really cannot afford $345 for glasses unless I take the money from my Disney account. The back door needs to be fixed. I have to get it working again. I don't see that as a small repair. I can fund that, again, IF I take money from my Disney account.
Another acquaintance, more sympathetic to this frustration, said, "You have 6 months before you have to hand over the rest of the money for the vacation. You should be able to save what you take out in 6 months." The operative word there is 'should'. While I have the vacation paid for, I want spending money and money for, frankly, impulse purchases. As I did when I went to BlizzCon and Disneyland in 2015, I want to do Christmas shopping. My tax return wasn't enough to cover those things. I still need to save and it's hard to save when life throws these things at you.
Then, I find out, at the beginning of this month, one of my late English pen pal's daughters and her family, are coming to Florida for two weeks; Disney World and Universal. I have not seen Elizabeth since 1996. She's married with two kids of her own. Her dad and brother are coming and I last saw them in 2005. "You're welcome to come to our villa and stay for a few days. It would be wonderful to see you and we have an extra room," she said.
Oh dear. If I plunder the Disney fund, I can go. I have the vacation days. I wouldn't go for more than a down, hang out, back weekend. But if I take money for this from the fund, where does it stop? This is not, by any stretch, an emergency. Yet, they are so close. I'd need airfare and a car and money for food. I'm content with not going to either Disney and Universal and just hanging around the villa. When Anne died, we kind of lost touch with each other. What a unique opportunity to reconnect, and yet...
Those words above, from a woman I don't like, rankle me, stick in my craw, so to speak. I know there are people much less off than me. Part of my refund went to charities I feel strongly about. This whole glasses thing has me looking ahead. Every year, I fear, I'm going to be in this position of needing new glasses and not finding anything which fits my budget. I'm not looking at frame which cost $170, either. I find those to be ugly, frankly. I also haven't posted my door problem to a site called "Thumbtack" where companies and handymen can give you an estimate on what they think it will cost to do what you want done. Maybe I'm way overestimating what I think fixing the door will cost. I could be pleasantly surprised.
This is merely a post expressing frustration at life and how it seems to gang up on us. I'm going to make do with my glasses for right now. I have no desire to call Glasses USA. If they want my business, they will tell me in writing, what kind of discount they are offering. Otherwise, at the end of the month, I'll schlep myself out to glasses stores and have a look. It may not yield anything, but at least I've given it a go. I want to see Elizabeth, Graham and James and Elizabeth's husband and kids. But that trip feels very much like a "lottery trip" where only some unexpected windfall is going to make it happen because I'm so resistant to using my Disney funds. And then a wave of sadness comes over me and I wonder if I'm being incredibly selfish.
I never count on a windfall. I never counted on getting a tax refund which paid for the basic trip. I don't count on having work trips where I'd get mileage which could be applied somewhere. I count only on what I make every month and that has to work to make what I need a reality. Anything else is unexpected. I just wish life wasn't, sometimes, a need to throw money at things to make it better. It gets down-heartening.
No, that's not the Jeep. That's a rental car, a Hyundai Elantra. I was headed west last week, out to Rock Island to finish up this inspection project. I got just past Dekalb on Interstate 88 and the Jeep shuddered. The motor sounded like it skipped and there was a palpable shudder as I was driving down the road. I thought it was perhaps a wind buffet as I was being passed by semis going 75, but it happened a few miles later when it was just me. It scared me so I pulled off at a truck stop in Rochelle and made the decision that not breaking down was in my best interests. That was Thursday.
It's now Tuesday afternoon and I have no idea what's up with the Jeep. I have the rental car for one more day. I'm trying to keep my spirits up, but I have to say it's been terribly, terribly hard to not burst into tears.
Back in March, I did a budget for the rest of the year. I figured out how to save money to try to go to BlizzCon in November, as well as pad my savings account for unexpected expenses. When the washer died, I was so proud of myself for having saved and to have built in some minor wiggle room to afford a new washer. It wouldn't impact BlizzCon. Getting sick last month did, but not too terribly much. I just didn't cook so I ate a lot of prepared foods. An unexpected bonus funded the Target run that got me foods I could fix with minimal effort since I had next to no energy. I made it through August. I came through with my budget intact and even a bit more to set aside for souvenirs from Disneyland.
Now this.
I need a hair cut. Nope. I need groceries. Nope. I need to buy air fare to California. I've watched them creep up from $280 to currently $320. I will have to pay quite a bit more when I can afford to buy them. I need to have money for the hotel room. And I so wanted to go to Disneyland while I was out there. That ipad idea. Nope. Disney is not a "must see". I can scrap that to save money. I'll need to eat but I don't need to buy souvenirs.
I tell myself to be grateful that I have the funds to fix the Jeep. I would be well beyond stressed if there wasn't any kind of cushion to fall back on. I'm used to living on scraps and the bare minimum. Still, there is the nagging voice that says, "You didn't NEED to go to BlizzCon, you know." It's too late to change the name on the ticket, though, so I've purchased it even if I wind up not going due to finances.
The Jeep needs to be replaced. Even when it gets up and running again, I need to continue to stick money into my replacement fund. This Elantra is fun and I've very much enjoyed driving it. The "racer" styling to the roof has taken some getting used to. I can't always see out the rear window when backing up or when I look over my right shoulder when changing lanes. It would take getting used to. Plus, I would have to shovel the drive now when snow accumulates more than 3 inches. Now, it takes a 6+ inch snow for me to consider shoveling. 4-wheel drive and I go. Still, that's not an insurmountable problem.
I looked into used Elantras. I can't buy new. The new car smell is toxic to me and it causes my allergies to go into overdrive. I get physically ill. Good used Elantras are selling for $11,000. I can't, right now, afford that. I don't want to jettison the rest of my budget. I'm on track for paying off some debt the first of next year. I want to stay in that track. It's important to stay focused after all I've been through.
Beverage: Water
Deb
Update: I can breathe. My mechanic cleared the codes because they "didn't make sense", changed the oil and the air filter. Then, he drove it around for 20 minutes and could not make it stutter. He said he's flummoxed. "Just doing those things shouldn't make a problem like you were describing go away." They are going to keep it through noon tomorrow and try driving it in the morning since that's when I had the issue. I can't spend any money until after I pick it up and pay for the rental car, but this is much better than my worse case scenario.
The photos pile up as do the books and magazines on the ottoman. There are dishes waiting to be done, waiting and waiting again. I walk across the living room floor and feel the grit of an unswept floor. Pilchard yells at me because, rightly, the litter boxes haven't been cleaned in 4 days. I look across the detritus of my life and think, "If only I had more time."
Time. Elusive. Fleeting. Never enough, especially when the great and exciting and the horrible and nasty events wander through our lives.
I've been feeling pulled in so many, many directions lately. Since February of 2013, my office has been working double time, triple time, in some cases. According to the boss, our office contributed 52% of total company revenues; 52%. I come home from a full day of work so very tired. With that weariness, the things which I enjoy doing get shunted aside. On the plus side, there's a lot of overtime which translates into a padding of the paycheck.
Add to this, the weather. The heavy rains had water seep into the basement. Step 1 is to wait for the rain to stop so the water stops coming in. Step 2 is to run a fan to dry the floor out. This whole month has been about survival. I knew I needed to clean the basement, sort and move things around so I can deal with the dying washing machine. But when the basement floor is wet, it's hard to clean. Finally, tonight, I was able to move everything that needed to be moved. Then the floor was swept and I'm ready.
Problem. The washer I want seems to be out of stock through the 7th. I have endured, thanks to Pam and Patt, without much in the way of washing clothes with my sorry machine. But, this is another week and I'm slowly running out of clothing. I suppose it's a fallacy to expect a reasonably priced washer to be in stock for next day delivery, but I'm going to the store after work tomorrow to see if my choice of machines, either #1 or #2, is available faster through the store. This is frustrating. It takes time to do all of this. It's more to do, on top of the things that I want or need to do.
I'm frustrated. I feel as if I'm spending way, way more time not getting things done. I feel as if I can't do things, like blogging, which are important to me, because there's too much other stuff going on. Mowing the lawn leads to trimming back the branches which have been bent by the wind and rain. It needs to quit raining so I can weed.
This is the mess in front of the air conditioner. I mow and I see this and I know it's not good for the unit to be so surrounded. It's like every weed seed in the ground germinated with the rains. I cleaned for an hour in the basement and then pulled weeds for an hour. This is as far as I got.
I need to spend more time; there's that word again; working through this mess to liberate the unit. I need to put down landscape fabric and cover it with rocks. That would effectively remove 90% of the weeds around the unit.
The cross-stitch isn't going to be done unless I can devote a full day to just stitching. Do I have the time to do that? I thoroughly cleaned the litter boxes and that area yesterday after mowing the lawn. Mowing is going faster now. I was able to mow the back, the side and half of the front before feeling tired. I did have to sit down with my feet up for an hour in order to finish the rest of the front. This is a victory. I'm looking toward the day this summer, when I can mow the whole lawn without stopping. I can feel this coming. It feels good.
But there are piles to go through and I just don't feel that I have time to devote to them. Clear away a block of time and something else pops up needing my attention. Overtime is coming, simply to get through all the reports I have stacking up. I'm on the road again tomorrow. There is a giant job looming. As much as my boss wants that job, the indecision of the general contractor and the confusion of the owner over what they actually want could mean we don't get any of it. I cannot say that I would be unhappy.
Friends have told me to let things go. It's terribly hard to do that. I am not, in any way, shape, or form, asking for you to pity me. I reiterate what I've said before with regards to pity. I don't have a use for it. I'm merely telling you how frustrated I am that all these things I find I cannot share because the muse parks herself over in a corner and refuses to play with me when I'm tired and I am so very, very tired.
I want to promise that I'll blog more but that would be a hollow promise. I can only promise that I'll turn up, every so often, to show you things I've found. I hope you'll check back every now and then. Maybe you'll find something interesting on these pages.
In making the Graham Pull Apart Breakfast Ring on Sunday, I was required to reduce a cup and a half of Golden Grahams to crumbs. I dumped the cereal into a plastic bag, pulled out the tenderizer hammer and started pounding. About half-way through the process I realized this was rather relaxing.
Think about it. You have a mallet and you're reducing something to crumbs by pounding on it. Is it a measure of the violence in society that beating on something is relaxing? Thump. Thump. Thump. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. From large pieces to crumbs.
This mallet is really designed to tenderize meat. There are two sides to it, small and large spikes. You'd use the large spikes to make swiss steak. That is created, for those who don't know, by pounding a steak and then braising it in a sauce. The small spikes are for use on chicken. Pounding the breast pieces flatter is great for chicken kiev, for instance, where you're putting ingredients inside the chicken breast and rolling it up. I use the flat side for crushing things, like cereal.
I stood in the kitchen on Sunday morning, thinking of all the things that irritate me right now. Lack of funds? Pound pound. Rheumatoid Arthritis? Pound pound pound. Cracked top on the Jeep? Pound pound. Raccoons knocking over the flowers on the deck? Pound pound pound. With each pound, I willed the offense to go away. I ran out of irritations so I had to create some. By the time the cereal was reduced to the crumb size I needed, I felt much better about the day. So, I'm going to have to remember this.
The thing is, I don't need crumbs of everything and I might wind up with bags and bags of crumbs depending upon my stress level. Oh well, it beats keeping everything inside and gee, I haven't had swiss steak with noodles in ages.
I'm missing address labels. While you might not consider this a crisis, I'm slightly worried.
See, I thought, back in July, I had used up what I had. So, I bought more. Exact same kind because I like them. There is an image of a cat on the left side.
I got something like 250 and they come on these nice, roughly, 6 inch by 9 inch sheets of paper. I was preparing some things for mailing and used the last label on this sheet. I can't find any of the rest. Zero. I have no idea where they have gone.
They were on top of my printer, along with the stickers for envelopes and stamps. I have those still here. No labels. I looked through the small stash of cards I have. No labels. I've looked behind the printer and behind the desk. No labels. I looked through the pile to the right. No labels. It feels like someone stole my labels but who would break into my house and take just return address labels. To say I am frustrated is an understatement. What could I have done with them? I'm convinced I did the same thing to the other batch I thought I used up. They have gone some place where these are.
Of course, I start to think that maybe this is a symptom of something else, something sinister, creeping up on me. Hence, in addition to my frustration at not finding them, there is worry that this is but one step down that slippery slope.
I can't decide if I want to order more labels. I'm worried I'm just throwing money away.
For some reason, Blogger is not letting me post photos today. I have a lot of things to blog about but I want to attach photos. It may be tomorrow before this gets fixed.
I logged onto the computer on New Year's Day. It was 9:30 in the morning. I wandered off in search of oatmeal and hot tea. Firefox and then Yahoo booted up and I opened my email to delete the plethora of "50% off sale NOW!" emails I knew were waiting from those online stores with which I do business. There was an offline message.
This is not unusual of itself because I have cyber friends all over the world. While I look at "real" time as Central because it's where I've spent 90% of my life, other people are ahead or behind me in time zones. Friends know that sending me a Yahoo Messenger message when I'm not online will result in me seeing it right away when I do log on.
What was unusual was who this was from.
I have not talked to him in almost a year. When we parted company, it was not without some rather pointed comments. It took me 6 months to finally erase all his contact information from everywhere; phone numbers, Internet address, instant message address (there were several of each) and, ultimately, home address. But erase it I did, although it did nothing to erase the huge, huge wish that things had turned out differently.
I can go weeks without thinking about him and then have days strung together where he's always there. Writing about the first anniversary of his visit helped a great deal in putting the restless memories to bed. I was able to let go of some parts of the fantasy and accept the more concrete reality of never speaking again and never wanting to speak again.
But here was an Instant Message with the robotic request from Yahoo Messenger to allow it to add me as a friend to his friend's list.
I sat there, I'm not kidding, a good 10-15 minutes with the mouse hovering over the "Accept" button, while I wrestled with demons that blasted out of the inner closet where I had shoved them. Do I or don't I? The big problem is the knowledge that I will be sucked back into something I worked so hard to be rid of. He could not/would not commit to our relationship for various reasons and it makes no difference if he was around the block, the state or the world. The inability or unwillingness to find a common ground between what he was giving me and what I wanted split us apart. He's not a bad person. On the contrary, what made this exceptionally hard was the goodness, kindness, caring and concern I saw and experienced first hand in him. But I won't be excluded if you want a relationship, whether that exclusion is accidental or on purpose. And that's where the impasse lay.
I finally clicked "Accept" and the program informed me that he would be told of my acceptance. That's where it stands. There has been no further communication, real or via a program, since. I accepted because my curiosity about why overcame my reluctance to start anything, even a mild friendship, up again. There is/was so much I don't know, so much that was left unsaid. I wanted to find out if I could get answers, get the information I desire, even if it meant there was nothing between us anymore and we would, finally, go our own ways and I would wrestle no more memories.
A friend has suggested this was a new girlfriend's way of getting back at him. I don't buy that because why still maintain my contact information and, more importantly, letting a current girlfriend have what would amount to unlimited access to your computer? He, more or less, walked away from me and, in doing that, I would think keeping my contact information is the last thing he would do.
Another friend has a different take. It is her considered opinion that this is "New Year's Remorse", as she calls it. He was, perhaps, alone and drunk and looking over the debris of the past year. Perhaps he felt a twinge of sadness for how things ended. Perhaps he just wishes to not have there be anger. There were other, less charitable and more morbid suggestions for why contact was made, but I tend to think well of people until proven wrong. In any case, she tells me not to expect additional contact.
And this leads to my confusion. I can't contact him. I don't have his email anymore. I did a very, very thorough job of erasing it from my planner. I remember bits and pieces of it and yes, yes, I know once you have an email, it's impossible to not be found. But I don't want to do the deep work it would take me to find this. I don't want to look on Facebook and try to friend him knowing that he probably isn't going to reciprocate. Mercifully, Facebook doesn't tell you your friend request has been denied. I just want to know why, after these long months, did this show up in my instant messenger, at the start of a new year.
This is one question that is probably not likely to be answered. I guess, in my heart, I know whatever this was was a mistake and there is not to be further contact. Gradually, I'll let this go as I have let other things go. But the answer to the question you're wanting to ask but not sure quite how is, yes, if I got what I was seeking, yes.
I am trying to be optimistic about this whole financial mess.
I had to go back to the bank yesterday because the promised phone call regarding the exorbitant fees tacked onto my account had not materialized and I gave them an extra day. Plus, when I went to log onto my account online, I was denied. That was frustration and a half.
The screen said to create a new password. Okay, that I can accept. I attempted to do that and was told to call a toll free number. Call the toll free number and get the English or Spanish option. Then get "Enter your account number or your Social Security number." I entered my account number and got a repeat of the sentence. I did this for 15 minutes, hanging up and trying again with either the account number or my Social Security number.
In frustration, I found another toll free number and called that. I did get through to an operator that time. I explain I was having problems and could she transfer me or was there another number I could call. She informed me I had to call the previous number. I explained I'd been doing this for 15 minutes. I understood she couldn't help me but could she send my call somewhere else or give me another number. No. I had to call the original number. Again I explained the problem and when she told me yet again, that I had to call the original number, I asked to speak to a supervisor. She told me to call the first number and hung up on me. No, I didn't get her name because I was, at this point, nearly in tears.
So, yesterday, armed with times and a list of everything I have done, I went back to the bank and talked to the man who, it turns out, is at the top of the food chain at this branch. I told him exactly what I did, what number I called and what happened. He called the same number I did and got the same voice prompt. "Oh well, you have to dial..." I forget what number it is, to get out of that circle. It's not explained. There is zero explanation on the phone system.
I told him that's horrible customer service. As a customer, I wouldn't know to push that number because that's NOT what the message says. He knows because he works there. He looked at my account. He had to do a great deal of manipulation of the account numbers to get into the screen that shows my accounts. I have a temporary number until this mess gets sorted out, but he got in and wrote everything down for me.
That's when he noticed the Mastercard account, the one they screwed up on the online payment for, had been closed. I received no notice that this was going to happen. He said that's against the law, first of all and secondly, I should have received a letter AND a phone call from a live person. So, he showed me the protest email he was sending.
Then there is the matter of the fees attached to my checking account. I came, yesterday, with the letters telling me I needed to make the account positive, you know, the ones I didn't get until 4 days AFTER I was supposed to fix this. He looked them over and admitted the letters were confusing because they are system generated and not in chronological order. I should have received a phone call from a live person. I've only received these calls that tell me to go online, which I couldn't, to see what the problem was. Again, he showed me the protest email he was sending up the food chain.
Unfortunately, the review of my account could take "5 to 7 business days" and I protested last Thursday. I told him I have been unable to pay any bills because I have no idea how much money is in my account. I will have to call other credit card companies and explain the problem so additional fees won't get attached to those accounts. So, far, that has gone well. It takes longer than expected to get through the explanations so I have missed a couple cards that are on the east coast. Fortunately, I don't have much so it's not a stack. It's just embarrassing to have to explain this every single time. Mr. manager said he would ask that a decision be expedited.
So, here we come to the weekend. I have a check from liquid funds that I could deposit or start a new account. I really don't want the hassle of a new account, but this is beyond ridiculous. I am to write up all the problems I have had with how this bank's online system works, how their phone system works and that ridiculous hang up on Wednesday. Mr. manager assures me he will see that it gets passed up to those who deal with customer service. I'm also thinking I should send a copy to the Better Business Bureau, my congressman, my senator and the Illinois Attorney General. The latter's office takes a very dim view of this kind of thing.
I was remembering when I refinanced my mortgage and got a debit card. I put it aside and didn't use it. At the time, we were getting paper payroll and expense checks. Those expense checks were what I lived on.
Now, everything is electronic. My paycheck and expense checks are direct deposit. The only thing I see is the email saying the expense check has been deposited and the statement from my paycheck. I never see anything that requires me to go to the bank. Am I better off this way?
I'm thinking, for me, I need to have X number of dollars at the beginning of the week and that's all I have to live on. It's too easy to swipe the debit card at Caribou Coffee or Flips Italian Beef or Carol's Garden Restaurant. I'm thinking, for the time being, I need to go back to the old ledger form of financial accounting. Everything I buy or any check I write, needs to be entered into some sort of ledger so I can account for every penny. Perhaps I got lax. Perhaps I got too trusting although I do look at my accounts at least 4 times a month online. I match up all receipts but, for me, maybe that's not enough.
I don't know. I just know I can't go through this again and I need to have concrete specific proof that I didn't spend more than I took in so if this were to happen again, I can come back and say, "I did not screw up. You did."
I need pie. After work, I'm going over to Dominicks and getting a pie, a whole pie, and I'm going to take a long time to eat it.
