I hope this doesn’t happen to you.
I lost my ABM card on a Friday night in November and didn’t replace it right away. The following Wednesday, I was going through my e-mail and nearly fainted.
Seven withdrawals from my bank account in the space of 49 minutes totalling $992.81, withdrawals I didn’t recognize. At 9:28 a.m., $75.42; at 9:35 a.m., $29.78; at 9:47 a.m., $114.46; at 9:59 a.m., $400.00 (the thief must have used it at an ABM); at 9:59 a.m., $77.51; at 9:59 a.m., $56.63; at 10:17, $239.01 (the thief must have taken a break for a coffee.)
I looked at my account balance. It was near empty. I flipped out.
Jumped in my car and raced to the bank. Ran in like what was left of my hair was on fire and told a teller I’d been robbed. She couldn’t help me as I needed to show some identity. I didn’t have any identity as I had not only lost my debit card but a day or two later, my wallet as well.
I rushed home and tore the house apart. Found the wallet. Rushed back.
A woman calmly took me into her office and assured me, first of all, that if there had been money taken by a thief, I would be fully reimbursed. And that the bank has insurance for this sort of thing.
So, we called up my account on her computer screen. No sign whatsoever of any irregular activity. No unusual debits.
And she explained that on Mondays, a whole lot of debits that were made on the weekend will show up on the account in a short space of time.
“Are you sure you weren’t looking at an earlier period?” the banker asked me.
“I’m sure,” I answered, completely baffled. She gave me a new bank card and wished me well.
I went home and called up my email screen again. Uh oh. I had been looking at debits from July 13, five months earlier.
Maybe it’s time to clean out my inbox. There are 49,912 messages dating back to 2006 in it. Who knows what other crises might develop if I look at the wrong messages from sometime in the past eight years.
On the other hand, it would be kind of neat to get to 50,000 emails.
One conclusion: The people at my bank earn their pay.
©2014 Jim Hagarty
