Sunday morning Mr. G was returning from a business trip and called me a little worried. “I need my license plate number. I think my car’s been stolen.”
I popped out of bed (like you don’t sleep in on a Sunday?) and danced my way to the file where I keep things like automotive registrations. I might have sang a song to myself about Getting a New Car. I might have been thrilled to be done with the Jaguar without having to go through the process of turning it in to the dealer.
I did mention to him that I’ve called the LAPD about a half dozen times because I was certain that my car had been stolen while shopping at the Beverly Center. I did also mention that it had always been found a floor up or a floor down from where I thought I’d left it. He sort of laughed me off and I giggled with him, getting very excited about the prospect of a shiny new car.
There are few things I love as much as a new car. In fact, it’s possible that new cars are the objects I love most. All of them. I get dizzy thinking about the possibilities.
So I was crushed when the car was found in the next structure over and I’m wondering if there wasn’t a bit of karma involved with what comes next.
Monday morning I logged onto my Chase.com checking account to pay a bill. Just one bill. The balance looked off so I went through and took a look at the posted transactions. I saw an ACH for $89.99 to Time Warner Cable which is odd because we don’t use cable. Then I saw one for $583.78 to Verizon and we don’t have Verizon. Of course I panicked when I saw another $5,000 worth of ACH withdrawls, mostly to Verizon and a large one to Bloomingdales.
After several hours Chase was able to credit me back the funds and I was going to wait a day or two to close the account. We are refinancing to next to nothing as an interest rate and due to close escrow tomorrow. I can’t not have a checking account tomorrow.
Well, waiting a day is obviously a bad plan because this morning I logged back on to Chase and found this.
Those are not my charges.
So now I’ve got Jane home sick from school and I’m trudging over to the bank to close the account before these ACH debits come to fruition, and tonight after I get everyone to bed I’ll be at the police station filing a theft report.
I suppose tomorrow I’ll be notifying the credit reporting agencies and hoping that no one has our social security numbers.
Why couldn’t they just steal the fucking car? I would have totally given them a head start.
Something like that happened to us many years ago with another bank we no longer do business with (somewhat). In our case it was the DH’s debit card — someone had replicated it and was using it across the EC. We were livid and clueless as to how the perpetrator was able to do it. Up to that time neither one of us had ever been to the EC and the DH still had his card in his wallet. About a month or so later the bank finally recovered our money. I wanted blood but the bank took the matter into their hands so I didn’t have to make a police report. Best of luck!!
I really hope that you’re able to get ahead of this now and it doesn’t affect anything else for you. This kind of thing can be such a nightmare.
Ugh. So sorry you have to deal with this! What a PITA!