Thursday, April 28, 2011

Daily Report: Bad Numbers

The Bubba Gump Project has been going through a reconfiguration. The initial setup didn't yield the expected results and we had to reset the project and start from scratch. It wasn't entirely unexpected.

I set up an account on Xoom — as reader Kathy had recommended — to send money to Epril in The Philippines. It worked just as expected: Create an account, say where you want to send money, who you want to send money to, how much you want to send, enter your bank account information, and for a charge of $6 you can send up to $3,000 within minutes. (Epril picked up her money at a local bank just steps from her house.)

My Best Buy Card online payment was rejected today. "Insufficient funds." Obviously a mistake. I went back and checked the bank account number (copied off a bank statement) and the routing number that I used to set up the online account. Everything was fine. I called customer service to find out what went wrong.

Eventually it was determined that I had accidentally used the account number for an expired line of credit that was attached to my Chase Manhattan account instead of the account number itself. Putting in the correct account number solved everything.

Unfortunately, when I sent money to Epril last night, I used the same incorrect account number. Second unfortunately, Epril still picked up her money: Xoom authorized payment without checking whether the account I entered actually had any money in it. (You think that would be something they would check on.) I had to call my bank and Xoom and explain to both what happened.

I got my new Microsoft Wireless keyboard. I'd like to thank Mambo Electronics for being so overly reasonable, immediately understanding, and taking the extra step to ensure that I was a satisfied customer.

I went to the pool today and had a soak in the hot tub and did some laps in the pool. Now that everyone has gone back north, there were only 6 of us at the pool. Uncle Bob came over for cocktails as per usual. I made some Hamburger Helper, but instead of hamburger, I chopped up some pork. After work, I worked on making Cosmopolitans, and watched the movie "2012" on Netflix.

Yet another standard Florida day flying solo. 150 days to go.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Jil,

Thanks for the special mention.. lol.. Glad it still worked for you even if there's a glitch in your bank account info. I had a similar problem a couple of months ago and they didn't let me send the money. I have to call xoom to clear things out...

Another trick I did to cut off cost in celfon load is that I sent majicjack to my family in the PI which I registered here with a local phone number. All they did was set it up there, attached it to a phone and they could call me anytime in my celfon and vice versa at no cost. All that is needed is internet access.