Credit Card Puzzle
We’ve been hearing so much about credit cards these days. We’ve had them for years and for the first time we ran into something we couldn’t explain.
My husband got a phone call from GE Money saying they wanted 80 plus dollars immediately. He told them that he had no idea what they were they were talking about. They asked for our complete address and he gave it. When I got home we discussed it and we were afraid our identity may have been stolen
I got busy and looked up GE Money on the web and found it was a real banking company.We were still in the dark and wondered for days about what could be going on. I checked our bank account and found it was secure. Finaly we got a statement from JC Penny saying we had a past due credit card bill. Neither of us had ever even seen such a credit card and we were still in the dark. This was a Sunday so I got online and there was such a card on their sight. I canceled it on the spot. I did notice on the letter they sent that my husband’s name wasn’t spelled right
First thing Monday I called and talked to a living, breathing human being. She did have the last four numbers of my husband’s SS# and I didn’t know why. I told her everything that had happened and she asked me what I wanted to do. I said I wanted the debt erased and wanted her to make sure the card was canceled. She was vey nice and did all that. She told me to expect a package explaining procedure on this .
A few days later we got the package and we learned the purchase was from their Belts and Suspenders dept. My man does not wear suspenders unless he does it in secret. I don’t either. Then we remembered he HAD bought a belt several months back. We still knew we didn’t own that credit card. He couldn’t remember how he had paid for the belt.I looked . on the net , all the purchases we had made on the two cards we have. It wasn’t there. I looked through all our check ledgers. Not there.
Still in the dark, days later, I saw a purse I have quit using in my closet. Eureka! The papers were there, showing he had applied for a card in some promotion they had going on and they had put his belt on this new account. This was a bad time in our lives and he had forgotten he whole thing.
Last year my mother in-law had died at 95 years and we both were in an altered state. You know how it is at times like this. You always need a new tie or a pair of hose. He was wearing black shoes and his big old western belt with the huge buckle with cuss words on it was just not going to work. His other belts were looking nasty. Grief and other things just pushed that purchase right out of his mind. Following that, Penny’s didn’t have all of our address and his first name was spelled wrong. We never got the new card and we never got the statements. allowing late charges to pile up.
I was pleased to solve the mystery. I mentioned I was going to go online and pay what we owed. Those of you who know my man can guess what he said. ” Don’t pay them anything. Ignorant bustards didn’t do anything right” I waited a while and told him I was going to pay it and he said ” Okay” I did and now I can feel self righteous. I never get to feel that way. lol Penny’s was nice about this. This was just a strange thing and a lesson.