Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Disturbia

So there're a couple things on my mind, and in true Cheese fashion, I need to get them off my chest.

A couple weeks ago, I was flying Continental to Norfolk, VA, to visit my friend GB in the Outer Banks. The nightmare of the flight both coming and going is a whole other blog post, but let's discuss the issue of liquids on flights.

I haven't flown in two years, which is kind of crazy...but I hate to fly, and I refuse to fly if I don't absolutely have to. This is a relatively new development in my life, and trust me, I'm not happy about it, cuz I love to travel. I've been flying since I was born, my uncle is a pilot, I lived overseas and flew 14 hr flights several times a year in addition to smaller flights for vacations, school trips, etc. Being an adult and so deathly afraid to fly is the most debilitating and excruciating phobia I can think of.

Anyway, since I haven't flown in so long, I had forgotten about the liquid rule, and the fact that everything needed to be placed in plastic baggies in your carry on. No biggie. My friend had an extra baggie...I threw away anything over 3 oz, and threw everything else into the baggie. Voila. No chance that I was going to blow up the plane.

When I got to GBs house in the Outer Banks, I started to unpack, and little by little I found the most bizarre bottles of liquidy goodness at the bottom of my bag. A bottle of perfume. A jar of HONEY (wtf? I have no idea what that was doing there). Some face cream. These items were over 3 ozs for sure, and most definitely were not in the little plastic baggie. And they GOT THROUGH the xray machine.

This, my friends, does not make me feel any safer about flying the friendly skies. Anyone else horribly disturbed by this???

My next issue to discuss took place last Saturday after Yoga. UK and I went to our usual brunch at Comfort Diner, and as always, pulled out our debit cards to pay..we always split everything down the middle and pay with our cards. Always.
This particular time, the guy switched our cards, and we never even bothered to look...so she signed my slip, and I signed hers. In addition, she took my card, and I took hers...and continued on with our afternoon.

UK had a shit fit when Sephora told her that her PIN code wasn't working. "I've had this fucking PIN code for the last 20 years!" she shrieked. They suggested she select "credit" to pay, which she did. She signed for her stuff, using MY card...and went on to H&M, where she returned an item, and they placed the credit on MY card. Neither of us noticed the mix up until much later in the day...after we had separated, when she went to Pearl River Emporium and thankfully, the cashiers there actually looked at the signature on the card and stopped her from making the purchase...

Does it make any sense that not one person noticed that her signature did not match the one on the card? I mean, not only did it not match...it was the absolute wrong NAME. They CREDITED my card at H&M without even blinking!!!

This makes me FURIOUS, and very, very scared. And UK owes me money for whatever the fuck she bought at Sephora, dude!

2 comments:

Nicole said...

That is unbelievable! Especially the credit back- aren't they supposed to use the exact same card that you used when you made the purchase? So crazy.

kristen said...

i'm surprised about the credit back for the same reason BG is above, however, the rest of it - not so much.

a merchant is not required to have a matching signature- if they had a card present and it was swiped through the machine and they have ANY signature, the charge goes thru and the credit card company would absorb the loss.

seriously, when i worked at MBNA, the fraud department received a signed ticket copy which bore the signature "mickey mouse" on it.

quite frankly, the girl at Pearl pretty much risked her safety (had UK been a criminal) for something that wasnt even going to save her company money...

and i really want the back story to that honey...