Okay, so I started this yesterday but got distracted by several things. Here we go again.
So I got a phone call from my sister Katelyn yesterday morning around 9:45am. She works in the headquarters at our bank and received a fun little memo. Turns out that her, mine, and our other sister Christie’s debit/checking accounts had been “compromised”! So I head on down to our local branch of the bank to get it sorted out. The asst. manager of the bank, a very nice woman named Stacey, told me that neither my nor Christie’s names were on the list. Our bank is our county’s national bank so they’re small branches and only found within Suffolk County & between me, my sisters & my mom, they know us all by name or at least face recognition. So she tells me that the credit card company that doles out the money whenever you use your debit card at a smaller business or restaurant (I can’t remember what it’s called) had a security breach and if you used your card at any of these supposedly thousands of places, you’re at risk. I use my debit card for EVERYTHING because I’m one of those people who will spend cash if they have it – and spend it on stupid little things like a soda here or a pretzel there or even a $5 DVD at Wal-mart here. I figure that I dodged a really large grenade given both my and Christie’s (at college, she uses her debit a lot too) level of card usage. So I figure I may as well reset my pin # anyway since I haven’t done that since I got my account in 2001 (’bout time, right? yeaahhh). I go along my merry way.
Around 1:45pm, I get a phone call from Stacey telling me that she only saw page 1 out of 5 pages of this list of cards compromised. There were 3,500 people who had to have their cards deactivated and get assigned new cards & new pin numbers. She says that since she messed up with me that morning, she’ll let me pretend to be Christie so she doesn’t have to worry about the situation while she’s up at school with no access to her money (our bank ONLY has branches within Suffolk County). Usually, I’d be annoyed about something like this happening but this time I was calm and just figured, “Oh pain in the ass, but at least this happened now and not next week when I have to drive down to Raleigh.”
Cut to 7pm. Katelyn & I meet up at a wake and I tell her everything that happened. She tells me what I should have known – that my debit card was deactivated and unless I go into the actual bank to withdraw funds, I have absolutely no means of getting money w/o having lots of cash. This whole time I just didn’t associate what they were saying with what it actually meant lol. Then Kate tells me that it’s a 14 day process. 14 days, including my drive down to & first week in North Carolina, without my debit card. Ahhhhhh.
So I went down to the bank before I went to a funeral this morning and started the process of getting a new card. I did the same for Christie, so at least she’ll get hers mailed to her at college. Stacey told me that they were “putting a rush” on mailing the new cards out, so it should be here within 7 days – just in time for me to leave. Thank goodness.
This post is too long and I’ve got a lot to finish up at work – It’s my last day!! Lost tonight. Woot.
