You never know how someone will interpret your intentions until they have to make a decision that can either put you in the driver’s seat or on the street walking. Over the past few days, the bank made just such a call on me that stopped everything, and it was over someone reading a name wrong.
I’m in the process of building a fence in the backyard, and so I made a visit to a local store to purchase the needed supplies. After arranging for delivery and installation, I prepared to make the payment. Noticing I had left my checkbook at home, I placed the charge on my credit card, knowing I could pay it off at the end of the month when the charge came through.
Thinking everything was okay, I was surprised the next day when I received a call from the store saying my charge had been denied. Immediately, I called my bank’s credit card department, and was told a charge on my account had caused the block to be placed. The call was transferred to the fraud department, where I was questioned about an “unusual” charge to a social club that was not normal for me, thus causing the bank to block my account.
After numerous questions relating to previous charges and giving me the amount of the charge for the “social club,” the mystery of my strange behavior was finally solved. The “social club” charge was actually the fee I paid to the American Kennel Club to register my Black Lab puppy Ranger. That’s about as “social” as I get. After two phone calls and a visit to the bank, I finally had the problem resolved and things back to normal, with a fence going up the backyard. Next time, I’ll write a check.
It just goes to show there are those who can make a decision without knowing what they’re talking about. I assumed everyone everywhere knew what the American Kennel Club is, but there must be someone in the banking world that doesn’t.
Often, we classify folks when we really shouldn’t, and you never know where that might lead. I’ll never forget when someone classified me as an uber-conservative in a letter to the editor one time. It seems someone had determined I was an uber-conservative by a recent article I had written. They had gotten all caught up in conservative and non-conservative politics, and thinking everything related to that. In fact, I had to look-up uber-conservative myself to find out what it really meant. It is someone even beyond ultra-conservative. That in no way is a description of me. If you happen to know how I was raised, we might have been called conservative today, but we were mainly conservatively without money. I do have conservative tendencies, but they’re due to being reared by depression era parents.
This month marks the one-year anniversary of my mother passing away, and if anyone was a conservative, she was. Just the other day, I was going through some of her things, none of which have any monetary value, but are worth more to a son than jewels. There were ink pens that didn’t write, bread wrapper twisters, newspaper clippings, broken vases, spoons that didn’t match, a Mr. Coffee, and our report cards, to name a few of the treasures.
In the boxes were also King Edward cigar boxes containing miscellaneous receipts of years during my father and mother’s time of housekeeping. One of those boxes in particular that caught my attention contained the year’s receipts of 1960, ’61, and ’62. Among those receipts were notebook paper sheets filled with handwritten charges from the Farris Garage in Concord, where my father took his school bus, tractors, and cars to be repaired. There were charges from Versailles Grocery containing items of a ten-cent Coca-Cola and a bag of peanuts I can still remember drinking while using my tongue to wrestle each peanut out of those little glass bottles. Each small aging sheet held lists of charges made by a farm family at the local country store to be paid at the end of the month when the milk check came in.
That box held electric bills that amounted to only $6 and telephone bills that were an extremely high $15, and there were tickets to the I.P. Burns Feed Mill showing evidence that the Read livestock ate very well during those days. But within that highly graphic box, still bright in color today, was a history of how life was for my family during a special time.
It was much simpler then with your charging and record keeping. For sure, no one would check out your social club, and I’m sure everyone knew about your dogs.
Pettus L. Read writes for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation. He may be contacted at pettusr60@gmail.com.
You never know how someone will interpret your intentions until they have to make a decision that can either put you in the driver’s seat or on the street walking. Over the past few days, the bank made just such a call on me that stopped everything, and it was over someone reading a name wrong.
I’m in the process of building a fence in the backyard, and so I made a visit to a local store to purchase the needed supplies. After arranging for delivery and installation, I prepared to make the payment. Noticing I had left my checkbook at home, I placed the charge on my credit card, knowing I could pay it off at the end of the month when the charge came through.
Thinking everything was okay, I was surprised the next day when I received a call from the store saying my charge had been denied. Immediately, I called my bank’s credit card department, and was told a charge on my account had caused the block to be placed. The call was transferred to the fraud department, where I was questioned about an “unusual” charge to a social club that was not normal for me, thus causing the bank to block my account.
After numerous questions relating to previous charges and giving me the amount of the charge for the “social club,” the mystery of my strange behavior was finally solved. The “social club” charge was actually the fee I paid to the American Kennel Club to register my Black Lab puppy Ranger. That’s about as “social” as I get. After two phone calls and a visit to the bank, I finally had the problem resolved and things back to normal, with a fence going up the backyard. Next time, I’ll write a check.
It just goes to show there are those who can make a decision without knowing what they’re talking about. I assumed everyone everywhere knew what the American Kennel Club is, but there must be someone in the banking world that doesn’t.
Often, we classify folks when we really shouldn’t, and you never know where that might lead. I’ll never forget when someone classified me as an uber-conservative in a letter to the editor one time. It seems someone had determined I was an uber-conservative by a recent article I had written. They had gotten all caught up in conservative and non-conservative politics, and thinking everything related to that. In fact, I had to look-up uber-conservative myself to find out what it really meant. It is someone even beyond ultra-conservative. That in no way is a description of me. If you happen to know how I was raised, we might have been called conservative today, but we were mainly conservatively without money. I do have conservative tendencies, but they’re due to being reared by depression era parents.
This month marks the one-year anniversary of my mother passing away, and if anyone was a conservative, she was. Just the other day, I was going through some of her things, none of which have any monetary value, but are worth more to a son than jewels. There were ink pens that didn’t write, bread wrapper twisters, newspaper clippings, broken vases, spoons that didn’t match, a Mr. Coffee, and our report cards, to name a few of the treasures.
In the boxes were also King Edward cigar boxes containing miscellaneous receipts of years during my father and mother’s time of housekeeping. One of those boxes in particular that caught my attention contained the year’s receipts of 1960, ’61, and ’62. Among those receipts were notebook paper sheets filled with handwritten charges from the Farris Garage in Concord, where my father took his school bus, tractors, and cars to be repaired. There were charges from Versailles Grocery containing items of a ten-cent Coca-Cola and a bag of peanuts I can still remember drinking while using my tongue to wrestle each peanut out of those little glass bottles. Each small aging sheet held lists of charges made by a farm family at the local country store to be paid at the end of the month when the milk check came in.
That box held electric bills that amounted to only $6 and telephone bills that were an extremely high $15, and there were tickets to the I.P. Burns Feed Mill showing evidence that the Read livestock ate very well during those days. But within that highly graphic box, still bright in color today, was a history of how life was for my family during a special time.
It was much simpler then with your charging and record keeping. For sure, no one would check out your social club, and I’m sure everyone knew about your dogs.
Pettus L. Read writes for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation. He may be contacted at pettusr60@gmail.com. v