Grrrrrr...

I went to Shoppers today to get a few photos printed (one can never have enough pictures of the kid... No really, it's an addiction). I whipped out my bank card to pay, and the machine made a noise I hadn't heard before - "BLONGH" It protested, and displayed this message "We don't know who you are. Contact your branch" (Or something like that... I wasn't really paying attention). So I swiped it again thinking I probably mistyped my PIN or something... "BLONGH" It protested, again. It seemed louder this time, but the message was the same.

So I payed with my Mastercard and came home to try Online Banking. "We are having trouble identifying you, please try again." said the site.

"Shit. Something's seriously wrong here," I thought, and immediately called the bank.

I got some overly chipper girl named Judy or Julie or something (I really should pay more attention to... um... everything?) who gleefully told me there was a hold on my account and if I'd just hold on one little second she'd hurry along and find out why. I grunted, and got to listen to a couple of minutes of elevator music. Yippee.. Anyhow, Judlie mentioned that my card had been "compromised" and I needed to go into any branch tomorrow with ID to get a new card and take the hold off the account. Yay. The thing that really pissed me off about Judlie though, was that I had to drill her for information "Can I now log on to my online account?" No. "What was the last transaction?" *Sigh*, I'll check. "Did they buy anything with my card before it was put on hold?" No, it doesn't look like they did. Well, fuck, Judlie, if this was your account wouldn't you want to know this info ASAP?

So now I'm not able to pay a couple of bills (which I technically needed to do yesterday... Oops.) or buy anything until I spend my entire morning (probably) waiting in line and then jumping through God knows how many hoops to get my card working again. Not to mention, I'll probably have to get a new bank card number (BUT I JUST MEMORIZED MY OLD ONE!) and pin which I'll undoubtedly mistype everytime I buy something. Gah.

I guess I should count my blessings that they put my account on hold before the losers who double swiped my card (or whatever they did - Judlie couldn't clarify anything else beyond the fact that my account had been "compromised". Go Judlie.) could buy anything with it. It's just such a freakin' hassle to get everything back in order.

Ah well...