Complex Numbers

Busted

Well, its been a while since I've done a free-form entry.

PROMPT November 26^th

Today is Thanksgiving here in the United States. I know this is the prompt for tomorrow, but I'm going to give you something to be thankful for. The prompt for tonight is to be yourself. Write whatever is on your mind. Provide your own prompt, so-to-speak. I look forward to reading your posts!

I woke up Thanksgiving morning to find a fraud alert on my principal credit card.

Apparently someone had gotten my digits and paid their utility bill, signed up for Apple Pay (I'm an Android user), and racked up hundreds of dollars in charges at Carhartt's and some place called Ice Bling (which cracked me up). All in the space of less than 24 hours.

Nothing to be thankful for, right? Well...

This is why I use a credit card and not a debit card.

Quick call to the issuing bank, five-minute hold time -- and not a single one of those charges are my responsibility. Debit cards just don't provide the same level of protection (if there are any out there that do, I'm not aware of them). And you might not think it'll happen to you, but it will, eventually -- someone will skim off a gas pump (not what happened here because I don't use that card for gas and anyway, I haven't bought any since July), or a waiter will help themselves to an extra tip, or there's a website breach somewhere. Doesn't matter how. So this is where my optimistic cynicism comes in: I take precautions, but I also expect them to fail at some point, so I have plans for when that happens.

There is a measure of inconvenience involved. It won't be until sometime next week before I get the new card, with a new account number and whatnot, in the mail, so I get to go the entirety of Buy Shit Weekend without my main credit card. Whatever; I don't buy much anyway, and besides, I have other credit cards for precisely this reason (and also because some of them offer extra rewards for certain types of purchases).

I will also have to change all of the accounts that autodraw from it, like Uber and Netflix. Pain in the ass, but it's not like I had anything else planned for the weekend.

"But Waltz, don't you pay more in interest charges than you get in cash back?" Well, no, see, if you treat your credit card like a debit card, never spending more than you have cash to cover it, and pay the balance in full every month, turns out they don't charge interest. I haven't paid a penny in interest or fees on a credit card in decades; rather, they pay me.

I mentioned sometime last month how I feel about thieves. They all suck (and that includes the banks with the interest some of them charge people who don't pay their balances in full). And in this case, who eats the fraudulent charges? The issuing bank or the CC company, I don't remember which. They expect this to happen, so they charge merchants accordingly. In the end we all pay, so yeah, fuck that thief, but it doesn't directly affect me.

So all in all, nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Therefore, don't mistake this for a plea for sympathy or a complaint; it's just that nothing else of note happened yesterday and I thought I'd point out exactly why credit cards are better than debit cards, if they're used properly.

One other thing I did yesterday was go see a movie, as I'd planned. So here's a review.

One-Sentence Movie Review: Ghostbusters: Afterlife:

Although this movie won't make a lot of sense if you're not a fan of the original Ghostbusters, I think the three people who aren't won't bother with this one, anyway; and while I'm glad I saw it in the theater and parts of it are a lot of fun, the movie suffers from several missteps in pacing and editing, with some real head-scratcher shortcuts.

Rating: 3/5