...What?
Okay, maybe it's a phishing scam. I logged into PayPal (not using the links in the email, because I'm not a complete idiot) to be sure, and... Nope. Not phishing. Not one, but two $150 charges, buying "points" from some gaming site.
Well... fuck. I called PayPal, and after pounding my head for a while on their frustrating phone menu, eventually wound up chatting with a very nice man named Brian, who put a lock on my account, halted payment to the gaming site, submitted the two charges as fraudulent, and recommended that I call my bank and, with proof of unauthorized activity, try to stop the payment from transferring over to PayPal to begin with. He also offered me a key fob device, and waived the usual $5 fee, which was very nice (and yes, I took him up on it).
Then I called the bank, and that was... more complicated. I ended up calling PayPal back, and then the bank again, and then going down to the bank with my unauthorized access tickets from PayPal and talking to the branch manager for a while.
The upshot of it is this: PayPal, who requested the funds from the bank, is authorized to do so, and I want them to remain authorized, so the bank will not waive its $15-per-incident fee for stopping payment transfers. Once PayPal finishes their investigation and determines that the order was fraudulent, then I can submit paperwork to the bank to get my money back. Which is a ridiculous amount of effort on my part for $30, when instead I could just wait for the money to hit my PayPal account and transfer it back. Or even leave it there and just make my next few 'net purchases via PayPal instead of my credit card.
So, what did I learn from the whole mess?
1) I should change my password more often. Also, I should now go change all my other banking and business passwords, since many of them are similar to the one I was using for PayPal. (Yes, I know, it's bad practice, but my head is not big enough to remember more than a handful of passwords, and using duplicates was a lesser evil than writing them down. Seriously, when will I be able to link sites to an iris scan?)
2) PayPal has awesome customer service (once you figure out how to get to them).
3) My bank's customer service is not so much with the awesome. The first person I talked to was even kind of snippy with me about it.
Never mind that. Happy St. Patrick's Day! Yeah, I know. I'm not Irish or Catholic, so I have no excuse except that I like green and Penny was very excited about the whole thing.
Of course, next year Alex will be picking out his own clothes, so I took advantage of his current state of fashion oblivion to dress him up like a little leprechaun.
(He had a little "crown" that was a strip of green construction paper with yellow shamrocks on it, but he wouldn't leave it on long enough for me to take that picture.)
I made corned beef and cabbage last night for dinner (since tonight is chicken nugget night, and you just don't mess with a five-year-old's chicken nuggets!) and am having leftovers for lunch today. Excellent and easy recipe, but man, corned beef is rough on the diet...
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