When I was doing a little phone banking this morning, I was wondering why I didn't have as much money as I thought I should, so I checked my bank statement online. To my extreme annoyance, I discovered numerous unrecognizable charges. They included bizarre memberships to things like Great Fun, Travel Advantage, Buyer's Advantage, Auto Advantage, and to top it all off, a MEMBERSHIP FOR AARP. What the hell?!

Baffled, I called up my bank and asked to talk to a rep. The first rep was completely useless and said "Oh, you have to um...call each of these people and ask why they like, charged you." I told him that wasn't good enough, because each of them was going to say I asked to be charged. He kept saying he didn't see anything wrong with the charges. I reiterated to him that I didn't make those charges. I asked him, if I didn't make those charges, and I saw those charges on my statement, could it be...oh, I don't know...FRAUD? He claimed he had no idea what they could be because he'd "never seen  anything like it" in his 8 years of working for this major bank corporation and I should still um, like, call these people and ask what "I" bought. I said that's not the issue (Hello? Identity theft? Are you living under a rock?) and demanded to talk to someone else. Reluctantly, he transferred me to someone who actually had a clue and helped me make all the calls and cancel everything for a refund.

The cancellation calls were a real picnic. Many of the people who we spoke to actually tried to sell me their services even as we told them I was calling to cancel due to fraud. I had to cut them off mid-sales pitch. I know they thought they were doing their job, but come on, there's a time and a place.The rep at AARP got belligerent when we canceled the membership, and still tried to sell me some sort of package, which I refused. I'm not even close to retirement age! She was unfazed when I told her my birthday. She also got annoyed with the bank rep for asking for a cancellation number and said there wasn't one, that she had cancelled the membership and her word was good enough. She also said that according to my membership profile, whoever signed me up said my title was "Second Lieutenant" and that my birthday was April 11, 1970. Wrong...and wrong! She was puzzled and asked if I knew anyone with that birthday, like that would help. 

One interesting thing is that a few of them told me that "I" had agreed to order this stuff through "Netflip". I said "Netflix?"  because I do have a Netflix account. But they said  "Netflip! Netflip!" I told them I have never been to "Netflip"...but one of the sales weasels gleefully explained to me "It's a place where you can buy lotsa stuff! Great bargains ya know!" I googled Netflip and the description was:

NetFlip pays you real cash for signing up for great stuff like credit cards, CD and book clubs, free web services, cheap long distance and much more.

Sketchy! That doesn't sound like anything I would have visited, not on purpose. Could I have typed Netflip instead of Netflix by mistake one day and clicked on something by mistake thinking I was just closing the site? Maybe, but I don't remember it.  Actually, I mostly use my Netflix bookmark to access the site so I usually don't have to type in the URL, but who knows. And that's not even a probable typo for me...the P and the X are on different ends of the keyboard. And how would they get all my info, even if I did open a site by mistake? Can simply opening a site or closing a random pop-up install spyware or some other horrible thing? I'm sure it was a pop-up.

It's all taken care of...for now. I've cancelled my card. I need to go to a branch today or tomorrow and get a temporary one, plus order a replacement one with a new number. To summarize....my public service announcements for today are:

1. Always check your bank statements regularly
2. Be careful of typos...try not to end up at "Netflip" instead of "Netflix" (I still think it was a pop-up though)
3. Be careful of pop-ups
4. It's ok to be curt with a person on the phone if they're a horse's ass

 Thanks and good night everybody!

UPDATE:

Apparently I'm not the only one...

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/scam_alerts/tlg.html