Easy come, easy go...

  Before we left for our week in New Jersey, I checked my bank and credit card balances. I do this at least 5 times a week, so it is a habit, an obsession, or just paranoia. I’ve never had a problem, except when my credit card has been charged for the World of Warcraft on-line game 3 times in the last month. The credit card people told me that this happens a lot since that company allows people to enter a credit card once for their game play and then just charge their time against the card, but they don’t check against addresses and sometimes people just transpose the numbers. They removed the charges the same day, but it seemed weird to me.

  When I was checking my bank account balance, I saw that an old employer deposited several thousand dollars in my checking account. I had given them access to my account when I worked there for direct deposit and when I did some contracting work for them they paid me using the same direct deposit. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep the new found money but I figured they would contact me to let me know they wanted their money back and I would send them a check. I did get an email from the accountant at the company letting me know they mistakenly deposited money in my account. 2 days later a debit was made to the same account. I didn’t know that when I allowed these people to make deposits to my account, that they could also make withdrawals. I called the bank (Wells-Fargo) and they told me that once I allowed the company to make direct deposits, they could debit my account any time they felt they had a reason to. Not only that, but once I allowed the company access to my account, I cannot remove this access unless I closed the account completely.

  When this accountant started working with our company, I figured he was incompetent based on vendors that would stop their service because they didn’t get paid. I also had enough trouble getting paid from my contract work that I had to insist on getting paid up front. It will be a major annoyance to close my checking account an re-open it, but it will probably be worth it when this moron ‘accidentally’ makes a withdrawl from my account.