It's Andy Fish!

I’m as careful as the next guy when it comes to online purchases, in fact I consider myself pretty saavy when it comes to scams only I’m apparently a lot stupider than I think I am (I know most of you are screaming “yeah!”).

I belong to Bank Of America ™ — I have been with them for 30+ years and this is why– I get a text saying something along the lines of “this looks odd– did you do it or is it fraud?” << they don’t actually use poetry I’m embellishing here. So I click NOPE and the ball starts rolling. They’re on top of it. This time around someone bought $900 worth of stuff at Wal*Mart and sho nuff anyone who reads this blog knows Wal*Mart couldn’t get $900 out of me if they offered me $2500 in change. I followed up with a call to BOA the following morning to ensure everything was in order and waited about 2 minutes to get a human– all was right in the world, BOA has my back.

Now, Venmo ™ on the other hand– got a charge for $30 from a merchant I’d never heard of and I happened to spot it on my statement– so I clicked on the charge as the website instructions said to do and then just simply click “Dispute Claim” only when I did as instructed it took me back to the same page.

I looked online for help, it said you can find all the help you need online or right there in the app, only everything I clicked on was ZERO help. I tried calling the 800 number for customer service and after 15 minutes of entering 1’s and social security numbers and answering quiz questions like “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?” I quickly arrived at a point where the phone call hung up on me.

I then tried the ONLINE CHAT– that was fun because you get to interact for about 45 minutes with an AI Bot that gives you plenty of options which you can then having fun trying only to learn that none of them work.

Finally I was able to get a human and after explaining not only had I not made the charge, not heard of the merchant, had not let my card out of my sight, had no authorized a family member to use it– and assured them four or five times that it was not listed as pending– I was told the matter would be looked into, my account would be locked, and I would be sent a new card.

About three days later the verdict came in and I was DENIED. Now I’m not sure what the reasoning was but the email stated clearly that if I wanted to know why it was denied I needed to simply reply with a list of things including the date of the charge, the account number, the incident number, what I was doing on my last birthday, how many eggs I eat in a single day and why I went and spent money with this merchant and am now trying to back out–I even double checked that the email I was sending it to was the one they told me too. I did all that and sent the email, confident that at least I’d get a logical explanation to my guilty finding.

And then the email bounced back as undeliverable.

What’s the lesson? Use a real bank. Venmo ™ is not a real bank.