Fraud Alerts Suck

Winter Break is over, and so I woke up with an alarm this morning. To be honest, I didn't sleep much at all anyway; I get super anxious on Sunday nights anyway, and knowing it was "back to work" today didn't help. 

Things went pretty well for class, though. The students were engaged, and even had a few who I hadn't seen for weeks (not counting the break) show up. I had some work to grade that was turned in over the break, and I did that during my planning period, and go around to doing attendance and course recommendations after that. 

That's about the time I received the text from my bank, asking about a "suspicious charge." I immediately responded that it was not a valid transaction, and I get an auto-responder telling me that I should call, which I did. 

These fraudulent charges seem to happen to me at least once a year, and every other time, I've received a call and/or text from my bank that I immediately respond to. The bank stops the transaction, cancels my card, and then I need to go around and reset all of my auto-payments. As I sit on hold for ten minutes waiting for "the next available representative," I assume that the conversation will go just as the previous ones had. 

But it doesn't.

I don't know if policies have changed or if it's because I had to wait so long to talk to a person, but the representative informs me that the bank can't do anything because the payment has been processed. So, I'm out nearly $300 at least until the payment posts, at which point I have to call them to initiate the fraud proceedings. Excuse me? 

So, now I need to start off the next few days checking online to see if the payment has posted, then once it does, call the bank and tell them (again?) that the charge is fraudulent, even though they tagged it as fraudulent from the start! Worse yet, it seems that I might not even get the money back this time, at least not until a "full investigation is done." 

In the meantime, I just get to hope that this doesn't cause an overdraft situation. 

Sigh. There is a special place in the afterlife for thieves.