Friday, July 15, 2011

Debit Card Debacle

Ivan is blogging about this, but I figured I would add my side of the story.

My bank shut off my debit card, and it was not because I was traveling. Apparently any person who has used their card at a Michael's Craft Store is at risk for their information to be stolen, duplicated, and then their accounts cleaned out. Unfortunately, for my Christian Traditions class I had to create a reliquary as an art project. Although my reliquary, housing "the arrow" that tried to kill St. Sebastian (he was effectively martyred twice--the first time was by firing squad with bows and arrows, but he was saved by a woman who would become known as St. Irene. She nursed him back to health, so the soldiers decided to bludgeon him to death instead), tuned out really cool, I had to go to Michael's for the supplies.

Now Onpoint, my bank, did try to contact me, but my parents had recently shut off their home phone in favor of cell phones, and their number being my primary emergency/permanent number, I was effectively unreachable.

Ivan became my bank. Thankfully. But I was not able to fix the problem for about another week--seven days, when we had made it to Blacksburg, Va. This was the first town that we had come across on a day that was not a Sunday or a holiday (the 4th), and it was also the first town that was really big enough to have an ATM handy.

So I was able to call my bank, as I was standing in front of the ATM and they unlocked my account. I withdrew the legal limit ($500), and as soon as I had the money in my hands they shut the card down again. I then transferred the money to a rechargeable Visa card which is FDIC insured so if the card gets lost or stolen I can, with a little trouble I am sure, get the money back. All in all things could have been worse.

Now Ivan is going to be uploading a video of me freaking out about the card being shut off. I had just called the bank, found out what happened, and in the video I am talking to my mom about it all. Yes I was a little over dramatic. Enjoy.


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