Ok, so we are a little obsessed

Ok. So everyday,like clockwork, we check our online bank account. It's a little obsessive but on several occasions it has been worth it. Once a restaurant charge was several dollars over what it should have been. A couple of calls - to the deli and the bank and it was cleared right up. Another time (and another bank) we checked and discovered that all our money had been used to buy hip-hop clothes and shoes by a guy, using Paula's stolen card. Money was returned and again no hassle. That triggered the obsessive checking (that and when we were really really poor, instead of moderatly poor, we had to make certain we weren't overdrawn).

So today. Over the weekend we found an old cell phone that had some units left on it. Since it was a prepaid one, we decided to reactivate it and use it to call our friend Siti in Singapore. Better we should have used a landline. Paula carefull followed all the instructions to reactivate online. She even bought new minutes so that we could have a nice chat. She put in her credit card and it told her it wasn't authorized. Sadly, she cancelled the transaction and wondered why, since there was money available and we were nowhere near our limit. Flash to Sunday. Much to Paula's surprise, when we checked the account on Sunday, we found that the credit card charge had gone through. We hadn't received any minutes or pin numbers or whatever but they had charged us. On Monday the nice lady at the bank reversed the charge and gave us our money back after we explained the situation. We though it was over.
Oh dear no. Today, we blithely checked our balance and discovered that once again the $32.39 was gone from our account. Not a lot, but still. After a lot of searching we found the resolution number to Tracfone. The guy there, a man named Taurus argued with me that they never sent the stuff through. We told him that the money was gone from our account. We got the bank on the phone and this guy, a bull like his name, tried to talk through both the nice lady at the bank and Paula. Bottom line - they had charged the account, denied it and somehow moved us to Illinois from Ohio. After he hung up, the bank lady gave us her personal extension, since she fears that Tracfone will try to pull a fast one and put the charge through - and she wasn't going to let that happen. Who says banks can't be nice - or at least the people who work for them (Yay KeyBank).

Bottom line - check your accounts daily. Someone may be trying to pull a fast one