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lydamorehouse A good portion of today was spent trying to get the internet to let us buy Mason his birthday present.
We never managed it.
Every time we pressed go on the site, the bank would freak out at the cost, deny the purchase, and the company would bounce us. Shawn kept frantically checking our account to make sure we hadn't just bought two or three or four of these highly expensive gaming laptops, but no. When we talked to a living bank representative on the phone, they wanted to transfer us to the credit card department... only everyone was on vacation for the Fourth of July holiday (American Independence Day, for my foreign friends who might not know.)
I know my friends in the UK call the things we call "national holidays," "bank holidays," but honest to god, I don't think normally of banks being closed--but apparently some parts of them are. We ended up giving up. Our plan is to do this while keeping a banker on the line so that they can manually override the automatic bounce.
Luckily, Mason's birthday is not until the 24 of July, but I could not believe how stymied we were.
I am sure we will have it sorted by Monday, but holy crap there was a lot of swearing.
Especially since in the middle of all this it looked like I might have lost my bank card and I spent hours tossing the house searching frantically for it, calling all the places I might have used it, contemplating the hassle of canceling it, and... we found it in the middle of the living room in A VERY OBVIOUS PLACE.
SO IT IS CLEAR MERCURY JUST HATES ME, PERSONALLY.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, it's been a nice day. The temperature is still stupid hot, but the humidity was cut almost in half. So as long as you didn't to anything sweaty LIKE FREAK OUT ABOUT WHERE YOUR DEBIT CARD HAD GONE, it was actually fairly pleasant.
We never managed it.
Every time we pressed go on the site, the bank would freak out at the cost, deny the purchase, and the company would bounce us. Shawn kept frantically checking our account to make sure we hadn't just bought two or three or four of these highly expensive gaming laptops, but no. When we talked to a living bank representative on the phone, they wanted to transfer us to the credit card department... only everyone was on vacation for the Fourth of July holiday (American Independence Day, for my foreign friends who might not know.)
I know my friends in the UK call the things we call "national holidays," "bank holidays," but honest to god, I don't think normally of banks being closed--but apparently some parts of them are. We ended up giving up. Our plan is to do this while keeping a banker on the line so that they can manually override the automatic bounce.
Luckily, Mason's birthday is not until the 24 of July, but I could not believe how stymied we were.
I am sure we will have it sorted by Monday, but holy crap there was a lot of swearing.
Especially since in the middle of all this it looked like I might have lost my bank card and I spent hours tossing the house searching frantically for it, calling all the places I might have used it, contemplating the hassle of canceling it, and... we found it in the middle of the living room in A VERY OBVIOUS PLACE.
SO IT IS CLEAR MERCURY JUST HATES ME, PERSONALLY.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, it's been a nice day. The temperature is still stupid hot, but the humidity was cut almost in half. So as long as you didn't to anything sweaty LIKE FREAK OUT ABOUT WHERE YOUR DEBIT CARD HAD GONE, it was actually fairly pleasant.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-05 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-05 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-05 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-05 02:00 pm (UTC)What I find baffling is that I KNOW that all this stuff happens via an algorithm. And, yes, we are small purchases type people, EXCEPT when we buy electronics. Like, it is an obvious and consistent pattern. La, la, la, small things, BOOM, USUALLY IN JUNE OR JULY IN PREP FOR A BIRTHDAY, whammo, something big that is always, always computer or gaming related. I think any computer should be able to see that and figure our spending habits out, because last time this happened? WE MISSED BUYING A SWITCH WHEN THEY WERE IMPOSSIBLE TO GET. Shawn had been refreshing and refreshing and FINALLY got it to go through, and then they denied us. We were furious. And, because of that thought that switching to Wells Fargo would fix it.
CLEARLY, IT DOES NOT.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-05 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-05 02:09 pm (UTC)But yeah, the fraud algorithms have been extra annoying for a number of people I know right now-- people are doing more and different online purchases right now, and actual fraud is up because opportunity. My brother's had his card frozen twice for no apparent reason.
So probably calling and pre-authorizing the purchase will sort it all out (you may also have to confirm with the business that you are you and really want to buy the laptop, based on partner's experience of having to confirm a business purchase with both Lenovo and the bank).
So tedious!
Happy birthday and happy gaming to Mason!