Finally today by 10:30 am the money was put back into the account along with all the charges.  We did not lose financially other than about 10 hours of my time, a week with access to my accounts and a week without the funds Stephanie so desperately needs to eat!

What I learned from this experience:

1.  Random numbers or personal numbers are not safe from thieves; If they want your info they will get it.  The only way my card number and pin could have been gotten was from a camera attached to an ATM that I used.  I do not use the ATM if someone is standing next to me. I did not write my pin number anywhere  and I have always had my card in my possession.

2. The bank does not have to tell you anything.  The debits were made at bank ATM’s so there was probably video but you are not allowed to see it.  They barely told me when the debits were made; the debits were made on the weekend so actual dates were not easily available.

3. Having a contact name & number for the person helping you at the bank will not insure you they will have a record of your claim.  Each time I phoned I had to start over and hope they would get the right info so we could continue exploring the problem.  Actually this is probably how I finally got my money back because when I phoned on Thursday afternoon after being told they were closing the claim I got a whole new person, started over and got a different result.

4. Going to the Branch does you very little good.

5.  Don’t give up.  When they tell you they are not going to help you call again and you may get a different answer.  I have found this to also work with cell phone carriers.

6.  Opening a new account is very easy

7. Use cash as much as possible!

Now I can go back to enjoying life and learning to use my new IPod!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under California. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.