Oh boy

I have not been in the best humor for over a week.  No, make that a month.  

We have three or four credit cards if you count Kohls, which I never use since they changed hands.  Oh yes, and we had to buy a refrigerator last week at Home Depot... if you get their credit card, they take fifty dollars off the price of what you buy, and if you pay it off in six months, there's no interest.  That won't be a problem for us, and we won't keep the card because we don't need it.

We don't carry a balance on credit cards.  Each month, they are paid off.  I always check what's on my bill, and in February, there was a charge on my Capital One card that I didn't recognize.  It wasn't a large amount, but I was sure it wasn't anything I had intended to pay for.  I guess I don't check small amounts as closely as I thought, because they'd been taking money for five months, as it turned out.  All told, it was less than a hundred dollars, but I wanted it back.  I called the phone number on my credit card; the foreign lady I was talking to asked me if someone else used our card, I told her no, nobody but my husband and I use our cards.  She was asking one question after another, asked my my secret words, address, and social security number.  I answered it all.  This wasn't my first rodeo, and I assumed she would just send us new cards with different numbers.  

But no, she then told me that I would have to scan or take a picture of both sides of my non-driver's license:  she would send an email that would let me send those pictures to her.  I sent them, and figured that was that.  

I assumed I could use my credit card again.  However, when I went online to pay my bill, it was not active.  I could pay my bill, but neither of us could use our cards.  I called to see why I was still unable to use the card, and the person I spoke to this time said the pictures were blurry.  I took more pictures, they were never good enough.  For four weeks I got messages from Netflix and Spectrum and Evergy and T-mobile that they didn't get their money, and so I put them all on a different card.  

Today I called again to tell them I had taken a picture that I knew wasn't shiny or shadowy or blurry, or lacking in anything!  It was a man I talked to this time.  I told him what I'd been through; he asked me the questions they always do to make sure it's really me.  And then he informed me he had taken restrictions off and I could use my card.  I said, "Don't I have to wait for a new card?"

No.  And I didn't have to send a picture.  After all that mess, my card is actually mine again, just that easy.  I would sure like to write a letter to somebody in charge of Capital One, because it literally ruined a month of my life, and I sure didn't like giving them my I.D. over and over.  I want an explanation!  

Through all this I didn't cry, I didn't tell anyone about it.  I just grieved.  Cliff wasn't nearly as bothered as I was about it, but then I'm the one who manages the bills.  He pays most of them, but I manage them.

And I still wonder if someone in India has my credit card number and is using my non-driver's license for some vile purpose.

That's why I haven't been posting lately.