Part I Stupid Procedures
Remember I had this illegal charge on my VISA and I tried to call the company? Well (big surprise) they never called me back and I put off dealing with it and then when we got back from Orleans I saw a 2nd illegal charge. All together the illegal charges are only $67 but I called the Cred Union today and they blocked the cards but said I had to go in to order new ones. Well I need my credit card so I dropped everything and ran to the credit union. First I had to stand there almost 1/2 hour while we went through all these hoops. Their procedure has changed. Now if you want to dispute a charge you have to copiously document everything you did to try to resolve it -- who you called, when, what time, etc. One of the charges said London on it, no phone number. How am I supposed to try to resolve that?

[ASIDE: if credit card fraud is such a big problem shouldn't there be come sort of legal requirement for how credit card charges are recorded for your bill? An internet URL or working phone number? Wouldn't this go a long way in helping to stop fraud? And why legal requirement? Why wouldn't companies voluntarily do more to prevent fraud?]

After I filled out the form, it turned out to be the wrong form and now I have to fill out a different form and my spouse has to fill it out too and it has to be notarized and these ladies know jack about notarization since they said we had to do it at the same time and we had to do it there. Um, I'm a notary in the state of Oregon and my understanding is that a notarization is a legal verification of a signature -- it shouldn't matter who does it when and where as long as the signature is legally verified. But here's the kicker: I have to attach a copy of the police report. Yes, I have to call the police and report $67 in illegal charges on my credit card bill.

So now I have two visits to the credit union by me, plus a visit by my husband, and wrangling the police report -- how much time do I have to invest to get my $67? I'm seriously considering just paying it and screw them. I understand if they made it easy everyone would buy plane tickets to France and then dispute the charges -- but this seems like an excessive pain in the ass for $67.

Part II Payback
This year I went to High Sierra Music Festival which is not my thing -- it's my husband's thing and I was a reasonably good sport about it. But I used my scare vacation time to do something I really didn't want to do and I've gone to tons of shows that I was lukewarm about and listened to tons of cds on car trips that I didn't want to listen to and the reason I'm saying all this is that I don't think my spouse has spent a fraction of the time that I have doing things he didn't want to do to be a good sport for me. He did have to go see Ratt which probably should count double. I read in the paper today that Warrant is going to be in town (Berbati's Pan ... last time I saw them was at the Universal Amphitheater) and this would be the ultimate payback. Except I'm not too enthusiastic because Jani Lane isn't with them - it's Jamie St. James and some people at Metal Sludge said the show was majorly lame. (sorry can't provide more specific link ... can't find it right now.) So perhaps payback will have to wait.