the worst!

i'm still coming down from an upsetting incident this afternoon. so i thought i'd tell you about it so that i might feel a little better. to begin with, i'll just say that i got scammed.

this afternoon, while i was in the middle of making myself a salad, the phone rang. i was only really half listening when a man with a thick accent told me that he was calling from visa and that i'd been selected for a lower interest rate because of my credit history. i've always made a point of paying my credit card off each month so that i never have to pay interest, but whenever visa offers me perks because of my credit history i always accepted. so i was like, "ok", which then began a long back and forth of me confirming my identity with security questions, etc. it didn't take long for me to become frustrated because i was just about to eat and this guy was making me read the visa phone number off the back of my card (which i thought was weird, but now realize that was the first clue). while i was trying to get my credit card out of my wallet, i accidentally hit end, and he called back right away and defensively saying "why did you hang up on me?". in hindsight, his persistence and, at times, rude behaviour shouldn't been an indication that something wasn't right. actually, his poor grasp of the english language should've also been a tip off for me, because visa's operators are always clear and well spoken. 

he was soon badgering me for my credit card number so he could look up my account. i kept protesting, and even started to ask for his supervisor. but when he was able to tell me what my last payment was and for how much, as well as other information like my current credit limit, i became more trusting and did regrettably tell him my credit card number. but thankfully, i each time he repeated it back to me, it was always a few digits off, so i'm not sure if he really had it in the end. i really put up a fight all the way through our phone call, and kept saying i didn't want to give him the information he was asking for, but he kept displaying my hesitation and made me seem unreasonable. i suppose one of the main tricks of a shyster is to make you doubt yourself.

when he told me that they were going to charge me a one-time fee of $400 to lower my interest rate to 6%, i told him 'no way'. i demanded that he not proceed and that i didn't want, nor need a lower interest rate. then he started saying i needed to give him my email and facebook information so he could remove the charges, which i knew was B.S. so i hung up and called the customer service line. i was calling to complain (i had my suspicions that something wasn't right, but he'd provided some tangible reasons to believe him. i was very confused by the whole interaction). as soon as i told a portion of the story to the visa customer care rep, she told me that it was a scam and they were going to cancel my card right away. she also told me to cancel my email account too, which i didn't know how to do that, and i have lots of important (to me) emails. but when i spoke to someone in their security department she said that simply changing my password should be enough.

i called brendan as soon as i got off the phone with visa and immediately started crying. it's interesting that i was able to keep it together until i talked to him. before that my emotions came out in different ways, like aggression or talking fast. b could hardly understand what i was saying because of my blubbering, but he managed to calm me down. i'm hoping this is all behind me and that we (visa and i) caught it before my identity was stolen. i suppose it could've been worse, i didn't give out my SIN or my banking information. but i still felt so stupid. i'm not an overly trusting person, but he provided enough information to seem legit and he confused me enough through our back and forth dialogue. this whole thing really ruined my day.

the dark is light enough to see the ignorance of greed.