Fun With Numbers
Marvin was right, this will all end in tears
My work phone rang today. This is such an unusual event I almost missed the call. Seriously. I've had maybe five calls this year. Cell phone calls every day, emails out the wazooty, but the work phone is a dust collector and that's not a Bad Thing. This call however was. Bad. Sort of.
In short - American Express called to see if I made a $999. charge to someplace in Russia, dated yesterday the 19th. Arrrh, the irony: Talk Like A Pirate Day and the pirates attack! Apparently a credit card number has been compromised; first time on my watch, on my ship. Blast! Don't these keelholes understand it's Talk Like, not Act Like?!
Methinks there'll be no permanent damage. Charge gets voided, old card dies, new card takes its place. Now all I have to do is FIND OUT HOW this happened. Curse the scurvy bilge rats!
Yes I realize Talk Like A Pirate Day has passed. Under the circumstances I think I'm entitled.
I am grateful for AmEx vigilance. I hardly use that card and might have gone weeks without checking the account.
What's the pirate word for D'Oh!
My work phone rang today. This is such an unusual event I almost missed the call. Seriously. I've had maybe five calls this year. Cell phone calls every day, emails out the wazooty, but the work phone is a dust collector and that's not a Bad Thing. This call however was. Bad. Sort of.
In short - American Express called to see if I made a $999. charge to someplace in Russia, dated yesterday the 19th. Arrrh, the irony: Talk Like A Pirate Day and the pirates attack! Apparently a credit card number has been compromised; first time on my watch, on my ship. Blast! Don't these keelholes understand it's Talk Like, not Act Like?!
Methinks there'll be no permanent damage. Charge gets voided, old card dies, new card takes its place. Now all I have to do is FIND OUT HOW this happened. Curse the scurvy bilge rats!
Yes I realize Talk Like A Pirate Day has passed. Under the circumstances I think I'm entitled.
I am grateful for AmEx vigilance. I hardly use that card and might have gone weeks without checking the account.
What's the pirate word for D'Oh!
iRad time |
9/20/2005 03:55:00 PM
8 Emissions:
$999?
Not $1,000?
The pirates spent out on someone else's card, Radioactive Jam's card, and yet stinged out on $1?
Trust the bluddy pirates.
Apparently some companies verify charges over a certain amount. Pirates would know this; maybe they thought 1000 was the flag-number and tried to stay under the radar, so to speak. If so, they missed.
*mentally releases stream of colorful euphemisms and metaphors*
Oh, right!
I've never had a credit card to this day and don't plan on getting one in the near future.
I'm such an old school cash only girl. Can't imagine spending money I don't have.
Obviously I'd be a failure of a pirate.
I still live in the age of allowance, so this means nothing to me. Pirates eh?
and seeing as I'm trying to pad up this comment (you deserve nothing less Jam), I'd like to ask : would wazooty be a pirate word? what are its origins?
The pirate word for 'd'oh' is 'Take THAT ye scurvy bilge-rat' whilst running yer opponent through with a blunt (and barnacle-encrusted) knife.
I had a GREAT run-in with pirates on my Amex. Must tell you about it some time. But as you say, props to the vigilant Amex people.
Jen - you're probably not a "Pirate's Life For Me" poster child. Not spending someone else's cash is the key.
Lou - yes. Way more trouble to fix at that point.
Syar - allowance never goes away; it just morphs into a paycheck. And my awareness of the word "wazooty" comes from Dave Barry, a very funny guy. See this article - in The Moscow Times, ironically enough - for in-context usage of the word by Mr. Barry.
Anaglyph - thanks, I thought it might be something like that. And I'm interested in hearing about your run-in; hope your crew won the battle.
I checked out that article. I am enlightened.
paychecks you have to work for, Jam. allowance...not so much. ;-)
My run-in is probably worth a post in its own right, but briefly: it happened a few years back. I got an Amex statement and did a big double-take at the bill - a thousand bucks+ on what would be my normal monthly expenditure of a few hundred. Billed to a NY limousine hire place. Now, quite obviously not me, being normally in Sydney, but as it happened, being in Fiji at the time. I did a web search on the limo company's name + 'credit card fraud' and the first hit I came up with was an article from the NY Times about this company and an employee who had been busted for massive credit card fraud. The rest was pretty straight forward - gave the URL to Amex, talked to 'Lawrence', head of their security (who sounded like a British spy) and it disappeared from my life. The worst part is that I never found out what happened. And there are other juicy bits of the story too long to go into here (involving rock & roll stars, expensive hotels and probably drugs. OTOH was that my usual bill...? hmmm).
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