Anthony Wilson – I was always a bit disappointed at the lack of middle name.
Anthony for, well, “Tony Bennet” ’cause my parents liked him (Younger vewers will have no idea) – and oddly , for someone of Italian extraction , he also has Anthony (wrongly traced back to the Greek Anthus by misguided victorian scholars) rather than Antony, from, well, the (correct) traditional Roman, Antony….
Why should it matter, I’m Tony, or the Tonster, or Tone, or ” T ” or LuckyDog…..
Turns out, it does matter: I got a surprise letter from American Express this week, and an email too, in case I missed it.
“Dear valued customer, who has been with us since time immemorial…” (I may be paraphrasing).
“As of now we can only accept payments against your card from an account matching your name…… yours, blah blah blah”
Now while I’m Tony (or some variation on that theme) to the world at large, everything officail’ish get my full Sunday moniker, except, for reasons lost in time, my Amex card. Amex is “T”.
Also my Amex, is actually “our” Amex, a join account set up in tandem with lovely wife.
Since all previous payments (for about 18 years at least) have come from either Chris or my “A” Wilson bank account, I am somewhat confused. So I call the help line for Amex UK;
I get to speak to “Eugene”, who has a strong US accent, but the speech pattern of someone for whom English is not a mother tongue.
Eugene reads from his script and apparantly, this is my problem, and there are no options, help, or alternatives. I request to close the account immediately, but I cannot do this with outstanding monies, which must be settled from a “T” bank. Eugene cannot transfer me or let me speak to his manager, or tell me why the rules have changed (overnight).
It’s not clear where to go from here, so I’ve attempted to send the money anyway -as usual, and then I’ll bin the card.
However, it’s clearly banking week, and I now get a text from my actual bank about fraudulant activity. Turns out this is not related, someone somewhere has tried to spend abou £10,000 against my bank credit card (different card). I can’t fault the bank for catching it, but I am curious, because this is a card I never use. In fact this is a card I never even bothered to activate (I use[d] the Amex card).
Dutifully I phone the bank, jump through all the security hoops and am transfered to “the Fraud unit” – I am specifically told that I will NOT have to go through security again, and that a note will accompany me on the transfer to say that I have passed all security.
The “Fraud unit” starts with “Could we have the answers to these security questions….”
Then I wake to a missed call and message from the banks fraud people, “Call this number asap and you will be asked to quote code ABC to identify yourself”.
I google the number and it turns out genuine, however I am more than a little amused when; “Tanya” who could be a bad Eastern European movie extra, asks for everything except the code I’ve been told to quote. I query this, and actually wind up getting Tanya to confirm my details, and (visions of Russian Mafia aside) she is legit.
Turns out, my unsused credit card details, have probably been stolen, not from me, but from the credit card company, because- it had been unused for so long.
So bad news Mr(or Ms) Hacker, your £9956.72 spree in 8 Klarana tranactions has been stopped! Hooray for the good guys. It seems likely I’m going to be using the “other” card a bit more now anyway…
Next week on IaDL: I imagine it’ll be more on the eye theme…
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 