New M.A.R.C.S.M.A.D. Award

This is the story of how a simple errand, that we all do at least once or twice a week, would teach me a valuable lesson; thinking "it won’t happen to me" is hard to break but it must be done.

I was out for a warm, sunny walk to get a coffee laughing and talking with my wife. The birds were chirping we were holding hands and skipping down the stre…ok wait now it was nice out but there was no skipping or holding hands there were probably some birds somewhere.

Anyway to purchase coffee one would need currency. Where does one get currency on a Saturday? An ABM of course. So we made our way to our local ABM. Being in school for so long I was getting use to seeing very little money in my accounts but now that I am back to work I was surprised to find out that there seemed to be little money left in my accounts.

I started thinking of my recent transactions I had made on pay day and could not figure out why or where this money would be. As I checked my other accounts I realized that it was not just a little money but in actuality it was several thousands of dollars. I believe my exact expression was "WHAT THE F#*$?!"

Ok, ok calm your breathing -learn to enjoy loosing- remove the card tell Tracy we have to go home and check on something. Now at this point the two of us are practically sprinting home to use the phone as I desperately need to figure out what exactly is going on. Stopping for a coffee anyway was probably not the best idea as adding caffeine to my stress sent my heart rate through the roof.

So I tried to think clearly; did I accidentally over pay a bill by hitting an extra ‘0’ while making a payment? Did I transfer money to a mysterious account that I don’t even remember existed? No these just didn’t seem to fit. And no one has access to my accounts but me!

After checking my account online and speaking with a bank employee it was what I feared; skimming. Someone had their dirty hand in my account and now all my data was compromised. What do you have to do in this case? You have to go to your nearest branch cancel your card, claim the stolen amount, and file out the proper forms. Ok simple enough but did I mention this was a Saturday? And there was no way I could wait till Monday, my blood pressure would not make it.

So where is the nearest location open on Saturdays? Of course its at the south end of the city in a very busy shopping area. No problem they close at 3pm. But it only gets better as Forts’ luck is one thing for sure, consistent, as it was literally 2:40pm. So 20mins to get from point A to point B and although the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, Ottawa streets are far from a straight line.

I will leave the section consisting of the drive from A to B out of this story as it was filled with a great deal of octane, lots of swerving, perhaps some speeding and a great deal of expletives and feel that many are a little too harsh for most to read.
The car was brought to a halt directly in front of the building in the handicap space as I sprinted in to just make it with literally 3mins to spare. Ok the only reason for choosing that space was that time was a factor and Tracy was with me to move the car from the handicap space to a more appropriate one.

Once inside the employees that helped me were great and only asked me 10 times if I was sure that I hadn’t taken out that money. It got rather annoying but I understood that it was their job, and my mother being a retired bank manager I know what these employees have to endure with some nasty customers.

Later in the week I received the exact amount that was removed from my account and was able to relax and not have much to worry about. There are lessons to be learnt from this experience as I know I have. Major things are;

1. Be sure of everything you do relating to banking transactions and if your bank phones you and asks if you have made some large transfers and even if you had -like I had- make sure that you are speaking of the same ones. As on the phone they had no idea of exactly what transactions were suspect as they receive limited info when they contact you.
2. Tell the bank every year or so that you have lost or damaged your bank card and get a new one. Saves the chance that, that card number is around for too long.
3. Change your pin for online and ABM machine transactions once a year.

These are just a couple and as much as you think "I don't need a new card as this wont happen to me" well what do you think I was thinking for so long...