The challenges of selling stuff online

Posted on October 10, 2023 by The Old Wolf

I have written before about dealing with scammers on Craigslist, but this vehicle – as well as Facebook Marketplace or local swap/sell groups – is still an effective way to generate some cash for items that one no longer needs.

But above and beyond scams, which seem to surface with just about every ad placed thanks to bots run by the bad guys, there are always challenges to deal with. The series below by Kevin McShane at kevincomics.com is illustrative of some of the things one has to deal with on a regular basis.

The first one (being ghosted) is by far the most common. Hey, if you’re not really interested, why did you ask in the first place? How much energy does it take to just send a courteous message to the seller saying “Thanks for the info, but I’ve changed my mind” or something like that? I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the people who have the decency to do this.

The second one is infuriating. Sometimes it’s all I can do to refrain from sending back (in all caps) “JUST READ THE @#$% POST, YOU BLISTERING SIMPLETON!”

Despite putting in all my posts something like “No holds, no deliveries” I will invariably have someone express interest and then say “Can you deliver to Augusta?” Lazy wanker. Instead of unloading a semi-full of obscene imprecations at them, the Goodwoman of the House suggested replying, “Sure, for an extra $100.00.” That might just get the message across as well.

Then there are the folks who will say, “I want this but I won’t get paid until Friday, can you hold it for me?” I’ve been stung far too often by this, because Friday comes and either they ghost me (#1 above) or come back with “Hey I changed my mind.” In the meantime, I could have sold it three times over and by now the other buyers have moved on. So I don’t do that any longer. If you want me to hold something, you can pay me with PayPal or one of the other cash apps, and then I’ll hold it until Friday.

The kind of person who is too lazy to bargain is always a burr under my saddle. Just sending a message saying “bottom dollar price” or “what’s the lowest you’ll take” or “will you take less” is a dick move. No, I’m not going to put in your work for you, dipweeds. Make me an offer and I’ll either accept it or counter. And if I counter and you don’t move at all, I’m not likely to sell it to you. This is how dickering works. If you don’t do this, you’re more interested in “winning” than in getting an item for a good price.

[When we sold our first home in 1980, my first wife and I listed it for a very fair price given the work we had put in to improve it. We had a guy come in and say outright, “I’m the kind of guy who is used to getting what I want” and offering us $500 less on a $49,000 home. (I know, I know, prices today are insane, but at that time it was a good deal on an 800 ft² home.) Clearly it wasn’t about the money, it was about winning, and if he hadn’t said that I might have been just fine with a bit of wiggle room. We took the offer because we were in a difficult situation, but I wish I had been able to tell him to shove his offer where the sun doesn’t shine; pay our asking price or buy something else. The smug grin on his face still raises my blood pressure when I think of it 40 years later. Up yours, Monty.]

As for the last one, I’m not your therapist, buddy. Leave the story out and just cut to the chase. Can you pick it up today or not?

Like I said, online selling can be very productive, but dealing with idiots definitely raises the blood pressure. It makes me have even more respect for retail workers, who doubtless have to put up with similar nonsense many times every day.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

It’s no wonder Sears went bankrupt

Posted on September 25, 2023 by The Old Wolf

A tale of incompetence.

On September 18, the oven glass in my Frigidaire range exploded with no provocation. The oven had not been used in days; just out of the blue, boom! – glass all over the floor. Apparently this is not uncommon, but Frigidaire typically calls these occurrences “customer damage” and declines to do anything about it.

So being a do-it-yourself type of guy, on 9/18 I went to Sears Parts Direct online and ordered a new sheet of glass for the oven. I got a text message saying “thanks for your order, it will be delivered on 10/6.”

Three weeks without an oven? That’s won’t do, especially with a wife who loves to bake.

So on September 19th, the following day at 10:52 AM, I called Sears Parts Direct and told them I wanted to cancel the order. The agent (in an practically incomprehensible accent) asked me a thousand questions, demonstrated that he didn’t really understand what part I was referring to, and then assured me that the part would be shipped in 24 hours and would arrive in 3 days. OK, fine, I won’t cancel the order.

Guess what? I get another text message saying “thanks for your order, it will be delivered on 10/6.”

At 1:05 PM, I call Sears Parts Direct again. I explained the situation, and this agent told me, “I see in the notes that you are concerned about delivery time. No action has been taken on this request. We cannot promise 24-hour shipping. Your delivery date is still October 6th.” The previous agent simply lied through his teeth to keep me from cancelling the order. So I told this guy to cancel the order, I would find a part somewhere else. Fine. Order cancelled. Check in 5 days to make sure the refund has been processed.

I get another text message saying “Your parts have been ordered, Estimated delivery Friday October 6th.”

Cute, but I thought I’d wait until today to see if my refund has been processed. In the meantime, back on Tuesday, I went to Frigidaire’s website and ordered the part from them – about $40.00 more, but the part arrived in 3 days. Yay. Glass installed. Wife has oven, wife happy. That’s the important thing.

But today, 9/25, I get a text message from Sears saying “Your Part(s) have a delay for your order [number]. Track your part(s) and order details online [address].” The funny thing is, when I went to the website for Sears Parts Direct, uBlock Origin blocked it, and Malwarebytes blocked it for potential riskware with “coupleze.com.” Nice.

So back to the phone. Today’s agent said “I see the cancellation request, but because you requested cancellation more than 24 hours after the order, we can’t do anything here. The request has been submitted to our cancellation department.” I told him that I had nightmares about this extra part arriving on my porch, and if that happened I had no intention of sending it back. “Nothing we can do here,” was the response.

And, just as icing on the dung cake, another text message: “Your Part(s) have a delay for your order [number]. Track your part(s) and order details online [address].”

And an email this morning:

Dear Christopher,
We have not-great news: The item you ordered (W935098) is delayed because the product is temporarily unavailable.
Like most sellers, Sears PartsDirect is struggling with product availability because the global supply chain has been severely disrupted. As a result, our customers are enduring long waits for products shipped directly from our manufacturers.
We’ll notify you as soon as your order ships.
Unfortunately, our call center agents don’t have any additional insights into order status. We’ll email you the moment your order is on its way.
As soon as we have the estimated ship date, we’ll provide it to you. You can track your order at any time online here.
Thank you for your understanding and patience.
Your Sears PartsDirect Team

With customer service like this, it’s amazing that Sears Parts Direct manages to keep going at all. I’ll keep hammering at them until I get a refund, one way or the other. If they send me the part anyway, it’s their loss.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

An absolute flood of scam emails

Posted on September 8, 2023 by The Old Wolf

Today I’ve had 17 emails [Edit: over 100!] with basically the same solicitation appear in my inbox. And they are still coming. Sorted by section, here’s what they look like:

[TL;DR: If you get one of these, don’t respond. They will send you a link to your “personal account page” which contains a trojan, probably ransomware.]

Email Title:

It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Kenneth Jackson D id vvne6
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Paul Green V id sikb2
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Jason Perez Y id kdfl5
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Jason Perez Y id kdfl5
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager James Walker L id aezi2
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Christopher Garcia Q id icte9
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager John Nelson Q id yyaa9
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager George Miller Y id wlvj1
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager James Moore M id apja5
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Paul Perez H id yflf5
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Kevin Davis P id rllh4
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Jason Scott B id vair6
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Charles Martinez C id pffv3
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Kenneth Clark T id yzhe7
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Brian Rodriguez V id kmni9
It’s a pleasure to meet you, I’m Manager Richard Lee S id klhi8

Sender:

Courtney Waide courtneywaide5@gmail.com
Marina Members membersmarina743@gmail.com
Erinn Pichard picharderinn@gmail.com
Kaylee Ricca kayleericca@gmail.com
Lahoma Hamil hamillahoma@gmail.com
Farrah Loter farrahloter@gmail.com
Ladonna Fought foughtladonna@gmail.com
Lakeesha Irestone lakeeshairestone@gmail.com
Thi Manis manisthi82@gmail.com
Caroline Keets carolinekeets@gmail.com
Earlie Farrer farrerearlie@gmail.com
Michelina Schomaker schomakermichelina@gmail.com
Dalene Shropshire daleneshropshire@gmail.com
Lue Luckenbach lueluckenbach@gmail.com
Felicity Survis survisfelicity@gmail.com

Salutation:

Good afternoon program client id kfet6114b
Greetings program client by number ejzc8095h
Hello member id xnzn4252w
Greetings partner by number zdar4054i
Hello program client by number xoyl4179p
Hello user id zhim7333n
Hello member id biex4965z
Greetings user No. xedp9085j
Greetings member id zvme5736c
Greetings member No. pezx1857k
Greetings program client No. dodp1543s
Hello program client id lquy5745m
Hello partner by number lluy7602m
Good afternoon program client by number jirz1269g
Greetings user by number opsu7619t
Greetings user No. epxl6557y

Email Body:

Yours Registered Check / Registered Account / Registered Main / Registered Invoice will be closed in 12:42:32 hours [or some other time]. Balance of your invoices 38,469.49 [or some other number]. Please contact us via return email and we will provide you with help
for withdrawal savings / receipt savings. If you would like to keep your account active,
please contact us in a return email.

Signature:

Support Thomas Johnson W
Sincerely, the assistant Michael Carter N
Sincerely, the assistant Donald Anderson P
Sincerely, the assistant George Miller T
Helper Kevin Rodriguez S
Sincerely, the assistant Steven Allen X
Sincerely, the assistant George Evans J
Helper Charles Baker S
Helper Ronald Thompson R
Assistant Kenneth Williams L
Helper Thomas Hall T
Assistant Richard Phillips D
Support Christopher Martin F
Assistant Steven Evans J
Support Mark Williams S
Support Daniel Clark M

I responded with “Please tell me what this is about?” The return email was:

Thanks for the answer. Please go to your personal account
http://simp.ly/p/[obfuscated]

I tried two different times, and got the same result each time:

Visiting this website would probably have loaded drive-by malware onto my computer, most likely ransomware.

Edit: Today’s crop of spam:

Some of these have included the following crudely-crafted attachment:

Be very cautious about emails like this. Protect your loved ones by educating them about safe computing practices. Make sure all your computers have robust anti-virus progams on them; the number of scumbags out there is increasing daily.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The criminal scam of American health insurance

Posted on September 7, 2023 by The Old Wolf

Read this horror story. Read it, and think about it. The parts in bold are emphasized by me, things that should absolutely be illegal and criminal. Health insurance is the biggest scam being perpetrated by corporations on the American people, right up there with wage theft.

Write your representatives in Congress. Better, call them. Demand #MedicareForAll. It’s the only morally-justifiable system. It would save citizens and businesses and doctors and hospitals immense amounts of money, result in better healthcare and greater productivity for all of us, and would free employees from staying in a crappy, abusive job out of fear of losing their insurance. People would no longer go bankrupt because of a single medical emergency, which happens to nearly 650,000 people each year, accounting for more than 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies. Our current system is a crime, and insurance companies are the criminals.

———–

Michelle DuBarry
@DuBarryPie

A Thread

In 2010, I had good union health insurance. Obamacare was the law of the land. In November that yr my 1yo son was struck by a careless driver in a crosswalk. After two surgeries and a night in intensive care, he died.

Before we knew the outcome, I sat at his bedside, his tiny stitched- together body hooked to a million incessantly beeping machines, straining to recall what our deductibles were. I worried I wouldn’t be able to keep working during what could be a long hospital stay.

I googled FMLA and learned I wouldn’t qualify b/c I hadn’t been at my job for a year. If I lost my job we would both be without insurance. Without my income, there was no way we could afford $1K/month COBRA.

𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵, 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝘂𝘁 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻 𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗽 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗜𝗖𝗨 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹.

My husband who was also injured in the crash, was refused treatment by his primary care doc b/c she didn’t accept payment from auto insurance and his health insurer wouldn’t pay til we exhausted our auto insurance.

Have you ever had to call around to find a doctor that can handle your specific insurance situation? Have you done it in the days after your toddler has died, when you haven’t even figured out a way to talk about it, when your husband is injured and urgently needs a Rx refill?

We ended up with around $5K in out-of-pocket expenses and our health insurer paid $175K. Eventually, we’d receive a settlement from the at-fault driver. For a minute, we thought we might be OK financially.

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻𝘀. 𝗰𝗼. 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝘂𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗶𝗺𝗯𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 $𝟭𝟳𝟱𝗞 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝘁. 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁. 𝗜𝗻 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁, 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 – 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 $𝟬.

(Side Note: It took me 8 yrs but in 2019 I initiated and passed a bill making this practice illegal in OR. It remains legal in many states.)

Through all this, my husband and I both were suffering from PTSD. We had jobs, a mortgage. All of it hung in the balance. In a humane system, we could grieve without having to navigate an insurance juggernaut, without worrying about being thrust into debt and poverty.

Despite Obamacare and “good” union insurance, we were nearly bankrupted by a 27-hour hospital stay.

Every one of us lives in a body that is going to fail. Sometimes it happens suddenly, catastrophically. Do you want to fight with insurers when this happens? Do you want to sort through a mountain of bills when you lose someone you love, when your grief is raw?

There is no compromise on healthcare that doesn’t leave millions of people unacceptably vulnerable to corporations trying to profit from sick and injured people.

End of Thread

America’s economy is broken, designed to keep people in perpetual poverty to the benefit of the ultra-wealthy. Things must absolutely change. The only way that’s going to happen is if progressives are voted into office in numbers too great to swindle.

For the sake of your posterity’s future, vote Blue in every election at every level, from now until the heat death of the universe. Vote for progressive candidates who will work to build a world for everyone, with no one left out.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Beware of Facebook Ads

Posted on August 31, 2023 by The Old Wolf

This is a broad generalization, but based on results and statistics, it’s not an unfair statement. An overwhelming preponderance of Facebook advertising leads to scammy sites that promise one thing and deliver another, or which take your money and deliver nothing at all. I’ve written about this before, but another one crossed my screen today.

Interestingly enough, the link (sent to me by my wife) leads to the general website which has all sorts of “amazing deals” but which makes no mention of the product above.

Amazon has the same item… for almost a thousand dollars.

And this “auntpump” website is offering you two of them for $30.00? You can bet this website has been set up by unscrupulous scumbags with all the ethics of a starving honey badger. I’d bet a bowl of wonton soup it’s being operated from China.

Be very, very careful with anything you see advertised on Facebook. Never click on Facebook ads directly. Do a web search and locate the company directly, and make some inquiries before sending money to any firm that advertises there, because Meta will happily take advertising dollars from anyone with two coppers to rub together without the slightest effort to verify their legitimacy.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

An essay on Star Trek, Androids, and the gig economy

Posted on August 23, 2023 by The Old Wolf

This showed up in Imgur recently, and it’s the second time I have seen it there. It makes a powerful lot of sense, and shows how badly broken our current system of employment is at all levels.

A twitter thread by @_danilo on 24 January 2020. A hat tip 🎩 to Phil Stracchino for the transcription.

After the premiere of Picard, [I] name checked Bruce Maddox, [and] decided to head back and watch Measure of a Man, TNG S2E09.

And it turns out Maddox is a bit of a tech bro. Startling how well this holds up three decades later. This kind of guy is still a problem.

As a refresher, The Measure of a Man was TNG at its hammiest, most thought provoking best.

A courtroom drama where the fate of Data hinges on the question of whether he is sentient being deserving of what we’d call basic “human rights”.

After Riker delivers a devastating presentation that proves Data is an elaborate machine, Picard joins Guinan for a drink.

Guinan warns Picard that civilizations love nothing more than to create “disposable people,” to do the jobs no one else wants, with no recourse.

Guinan’s point is that by creating a special category that allows Data to be property by an arbitrary distinction, the Federation risks creating a permanent underclass.

This was the lever Picard needed — he wins the argument by appealing to Starfleet’s high mindedness.

This got me to thinking about Silicon Valley innovation.

Today, androids are far beyond our technological capabilities. So what the Valley did was build it lean.

Rather than building artificial laborers, the tech industry invented artificial supervisors.

When the algorithm determines who gets fired, when you work, what you get paid, and everything else about your daily life, there’s no limit to the cruelty of the workplace.

The human needs of the laborers are invisible to the software.

You don’t need to invent an entire android under this model, nor do you need to bear the costs of manufacture.

The software becomes an abstraction around real humans, but the owners of the business never need see them or interact with them in a supervisory context. rows in a db.

We’re left with “algorithmically disposable people.” Entirely commodified labor that can be discarded at will.

No one has to look them in the eye when they’re fired. No one need think of their kids or dependent parents.

No one has to worry about a thing — except the workers.

Gig workers are precarious not only because they lack benefits, but also because the everyday bedrock of their work is determined by a black box algorithm designed to extract maximum profit for a distant corporation.

They are raw material to be optimized.

And what is so dark about this is that the software is perfectly suited to this task.

Software perfectly shields the humans profiting from this one-sided equation from confronting the personal toll it takes on the algorithmically disposable people the company is chewing through.

One of the most striking parts of @Mikelsaac’s Super Pumped¹ is how OPTIONAL it was for Uber management to interact with drivers.

They could hide away, pop out to interact with the drivers IF THEY WANTED, and go back into hiding again, and the machine kept working either way.

Footnotes

¹ This refers to Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (September 3, 2019)

A Twitter thread from a year ago, more relevant than ever

Posted on August 16, 2023 by The Old Wolf

With Dildo Braggins now facing over 91 criminal counts, this thread from @OfficeBob helps to understand the “classified documents” issue. I thought it deserved wider exposure.

A Twitter Thread by @OfficeBob from Aug. 15, 2022

A friend with classified document experience has given me permission to post her comments here, and so…a thread:

“This week in Trumpland has been wild. So I thought I’d put my FSO hat back on and talk about document classification. This is a long one. A sitting president cannot wave his magic wand and declare something declassified.”

“He has the authority to read someone into classified programs whenever he wishes, but the documents themselves must go through a review process before being officially declassified.”

“Certain topics, like nuclear programs (including some communication programs that support nuclear deployment), cannot be declassified by anyone. The president included.”

“There was a lot of brouhaha when Trump included blatantly untrustworthy individuals in his planning. It was stupid of him, but also his prerogative as president.”

“When a president leaves office, they leave their security classification at the door of the White House. Some presidents may continue to receive national security briefs but that is at the discretion of their successor.”

“Those that receive briefs are read in under the authority of the sitting president. They do not have a security clearance of their own that entitles them to classified information.”

“A former president cannot declassify anything. Once they leave office, they are civilians in the eyes of the law. It doesn’t matter if the documents were generated when they were president or if they know the contents. NARA will not give them access.”

“No former president can just go to the archives an open a classified file generated during his presidency.”

“He certainly cannot talk about sensitive information that he is aware of once out of office. This goes for any government employee. There are topics that I am not allowed to discuss with anyone.”

“Most of them are mundane, but they are still classified. Others could put me away for a few decades if I talk about them. Therefore, zipped lip.”

“Top Secret/SCI documents cannot be secured by a simple padlock. The National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual, or NISPOM, has strict guidelines on securing classified documents that must be followed.”

“Including the construction of the room that TS/SCI documents are stored in. From the door frame to the thickness of the walls to the lighting fixtures.”

“Inside, the documents must be contained within an accredited safe/file cabinet that declares the classification of its contents. Each cabinet must be secured with a unique combination or reinforced lock.”

“TS/SCI cannot be stored with Secret, which cannot be stored with Confidential. Each classification must be stored only with similarly classified documents. Some SCI documents are so sensitive that they must be stored separately from all others.”

“Storing documents in a room locked with a padlock in cardboard boxes isn’t even sufficient for Confidential. Removing any document from storage requires that it be checked out and then back in by the FSO.”

“Entering certain parts of a building that stores classified documents requires an FSO escort.”

“Every facility that stores classified documents or works on classified projects falls under the aegis of a civilian Facility Security Officer. By law the FSO “owns” the documents. They are solely responsible for their safekeeping.”

” Go into a government office and look for a picture somewhere near the entrance. It will be a photo of the FSO along with their contact information.”

“DoD/DoE security audits are anal retentive to the extreme. You better believe the auditor will measure the width of your door frame and remove screws to make sure they meet minimum standards.”

“They’ll test the drywall. Run fiber optics through the HVAC ducts to make sure no one could overhear something through them. God help you if a measurement is off by less than a quarter of an inch.”

“If you facility ONLY meets minimum standards, chances are good it’s not going to be your facility anymore.”

“I have had people jailed for far, far less than what the FBI recovered at Mar-a-Lago. I’ve fired employees for taking a single Confidential document out of my facility by accident. Because at the end of the day, it’s MY document and MY ass on the line in an audit.”

“Put Trump in prison.”

Yes, for the health of our nation and our democracy, the crimes of this evil, sick person need substantial consequences, along with everyone who supported his lunacy. May the RICO indictment spread far and wide.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

When security goes too far…

Posted on April 28, 2023 by The Old Wolf

… or when the right hand knoweth not what the left hand doeth.

I have an account with Chase. You know, JP Morgan Chase, which used to be known as Chase National Bank. They’ve been pretty good to me and have helped a lot with some particular financial needs over the last couple of years or so.

But the other day, I wanted to do a wire transfer to another account of mine. So I went online, entered the data for the receiving account, and fired off the request.

Email: “Your wire transfer has been cancelled by our security department. Please call us for further details.“

Ok, so I call Chase and explain the system. I verify myself with account pins, one-time text messages, and various identifying data. “Oh, it’s because you’ve recently changed your password. I’ve cleared that flag, go ahead and re-submit the request.”

Fine. Request the wire transfer again.

Email: “Your wire transfer has been cancelled by our security department. Please call us for further details.“

What the…? OK, I call them and we go through the same rigamarole again. “Sorry, I don’t know what was said during the previous call, but they didn’t identify you properly.” Provide all sorts of information again. “OK, I’ve reset the account. Go ahead and request the transfer again.”

Also: Got a voicemail message and a text message from Chase Fraud Department. “Please call us to clarify some activity on your account.” On a side note, the voice mail was left by someone with a very heavy India accent, leading me to believe this might have been a scammer at work.

Call Fraud Department. The message was legitimate. I am asked for a whole new raft of identifying information, including questions about where I have lived, what cars I have owned, and so forth. I am told all is well. Please submit the request again.

Email: “Your wire transfer has been cancelled by our security department. Please call us for further details.“

Shiva H. Vishnu! By this time I’m pulling out my hair. And another text message from the Fraud Department.

Call Chase back, and call the Fraud Department again. Go through the excruciating process of identifying myself for the third time. Everyone decides that it’s because I’m making the request from Florida, and my normal residence is Maine, so the “back office” as they call it is automatically rejecting the transfer because they think it’s fraudulent. By this time I have provided identifying information to Chase five different times.

“You’ll have to go to a local branch to make this transfer.”

Wow. Well, it’s a good thing there are close branches here in Florida where I’m staying for the winter.

To make a long story short, the teller asks me all the same questions again. She has to refer me to someone else in the branch office. Finally someone comes over to help. It takes me about 15 minutes to get her to understand what I’m trying to do and what has happened in the past. She has to get someone else in her branch to approve the transfer request, and she has to call the Fraud Department herself, whereupon in the course of a three-way call I have to provide all my identifying information for the sixth time, perform mathematical operations on my driver’s license number, promise them my firstborn, stand on my head and spit nickels, and tell them that yes, indeed, I would like to make this wire transfer and that no, indeed, the money is not going to Nigeria, but is simply being transferred to another account I own, and Yes, I know the recipient.

At last. The transfer is effectuated.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Banks these days do their very best to protect their clients’ accounts, and fraud is absolutely rampant. Years ago my mother was almost scammed out of $65,000 by a filthy Russian bottom feeder who played the “You’ve won a million dollars, all we need is the taxes and fees” game with her. Being borderline senescent, she sent the money. By a miracle, when I told the bank what was going on, they were able to reverse the transaction (which sent money to an account in Cyprus) before it had been withdrawn, and Mom only lost about $6,000, the amount of the first request (and these skells will keep milking victims for every cent they have as long as the mark keeps sending money.) As a happy footnote, the FBI and the RCMP working together arrested these guys and at least one of them spent a good deal of time in prison. I hope he enjoyed the experience.

So I appreciate the security efforts on behalf of their customers. But in this case, things went beyond the pale, and it should not have taken the better part of a day to get a simple wire transfer effectuated, especially when I was able to properly identify myself to multiple functionaries at Chase, all of whom promised that my problem had now been resolved.

All’s well that ended well, but just reeeee-ing into the void here because the experience was so frustrating.

Cat tax.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Playing in the World Game

As One

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