Today's last errand of the day was stopping by Redondo Tobacco for a carton of cigarettes (for me.) I've been doing business with Sam and his brother "Grumpy" (nicknamed by us) since 2001 before debit cards came into being. My Citi card has been mine since the '80s. I mention all of this to explain why however alert Citi is, they skipped right over the part about "valued customer" since 2001.
I bore you with the above to explain what happened this afternoon. I went in, Sam reached for the Winstons and we chatted as we always do. He swiped my card, I reached for the carton and he said, "O hon, they're refusing your card!" and I screamed "WHAT?"
Seeing I was perturbed, listening to me hiss, "I pay that bill - in full - the day after I get it!" Sam said gently, calmingly, "Let me try it again ..." and it sailed through the swiper faster than me with a bucket of popcorn.
Then, looking a little shame-faced, he said, "It was me -- flipping the card over, he pointed to the three-digit verification number and said, "I typed in a 1, not a 7..."
We laughed and I got back in the car. Our house is maybe 10 minutes from Sam's place. When I walked into the house and checked the answering machine, the message light was blinking.
"This is Citi Card Alert - call us back re the card ending in XXXX, issued to Nina Murphy and use this reference case number - an 8 digit string." So I did. And it was Redondo Tobacco where I had been a mere 10 minutes ago!
I never did talk to a human voice, it was a robot call. Maybe the human was off feeding the attack dogs? Dunno, but damn! Citi is on it like a spaghetti stain on white clothes.
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