Susan Keezer: The wild world of banking

It was my own fault. The minute I hit “Submit” I knew I was into for two hours of grief.

I was trying to make a payment to a company in England with a debit card issued by my bank.

I should have known better than to attempt to pay an amount in a foreign currency without giving my bank a head’s up so it could find a hoop smaller than my head and set a blazing fire to it so I could start from my back door at a shuffling run and attempt to jump through it without setting my aging seat afire. I think I’ve just broken the record for a run-on sentence.

If you’ve been following my column, you know I am taking a course at Oxford University this summer. After that, I am spending some time in London. I’ve booked a small apartment for myself for that stay and therein lies this tale of foreign financial flummery.

In order to secure the place, I am required to put down a non-refundable deposit. I have been dilly-dallying, shilly-shallying, and generally ho-humming about booking it for over six months in order to retain my funds rather than having them parked in some obscure bank in Merry Olde England.

I was playing this close and nearly failed to get the apartment in the area I prefer. I could no longer put off booking it through my favorite source: The Independent Traveller. They had done a lot of research for me for this stay in London. I weighed the merits of being in this location or that, depending on refund policies, whether the buildings had elevators, how close were they to the Underground, were the areas safe, and so on.

The IT people are remarkably patient. What I cannot see when I am in email correspondence with them is whether they keep a five-gallon jug of Scotch on the desk when they see one of my inquiries land on their computer screens.

For the past week or so, I have gotten serious about getting my booking under control and have stopped grinding my teeth about parting with a hefty deposit. I am, I like to think, an adult and know it has to be done before what I want is leased out to someone from New Zealand or Nepal or Jakarta or, God forbid, Arkansas.

So I steeled myself, decided where I wanted to stay, paid out some extra money for insurance to cover all potential things that could prevent my plans from reaching fruition: a rhino breaking out of the Toledo Zo, making its way to Adrian, thundering through my home and impaling me on its horn or me breaking a finger nail.

I followed the link sent me by the booking office to make the deposit with my debit card. My hand had barely left the mouse from hitting “Submit” when fourteen lines of red script popped up on the screen telling me in no uncertain terms that I was a financial philanderer of the worst sort. It blared silently that my bank recognized my ill behavior and knew that I was probably trying to use my own card with fraudulent intent, and I had better cut it out right now.

I felt like a hardened criminal. I wanted to hide under my desk, because I was pretty sure this language was sent directly to the booking office with a cover memo: “This American woman is clearly up to no good. We recommend you do not use your good offices to lease anything to her. Ever.”

I immediately called my bank, squawking like a chicken carrying an ostrich egg, to explain what had happened. The manager immediately soothed my fraying feathers and assured me that in 15 minutes or so, I could try again.

In the interim, I messaged the booking agent, explained the situation, assured her I was not some latent credit card abuser and that the deposit would get to her within minutes.

Bless her, she was polite as only the British can be. “Not to worry, my dear!”

Then I received a notice from my bank’s Fraud Department telling me that a company in England was fraudulently trying to steal money from my bank account via my debit card.

I called them and there was some glitch in their robot receptionist:

“Please enter the telephone number you see on the screen to verify that you are the holder of the card involved.”

I did. Then, “Please hold for a few minutes while our system verifies this card.”

Pause. “Please enter the telephone number you see on the screen ...”

We waltzed three times before I was hung up on.

Then the phone rang, and it was a human calling from the fraud office of my bank telling me fraud had been committed by someone in England.

“No,” said I, “there was no fraud, the payment was legitimate and handled by my bank’s manager.”

“Madame, we see fraudulent use of your debit card by someone in England.”

“No ... no fraud.”

“What is your telephone number?”

“The same one you just called me on.”

“What is your telephone number.”

After we spent some 10 minutes establishing my identity, she finally allowed me to say once more that there was no fraud. I had trouble understanding her and discovered she was working in Jamaica from her grandfather’s bedroom.

I hope I remember to call my bank before final payment is due ... I don’t think I can go through all this again…and I smell the smoke of a burning hoop.

— Susan Keezer lives in Adrian. Send your good news to her at lenaweesmiles@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Susan Keezer: The wild world of banking