Believing

A couple times in recent months, an email appeared that surprised me. Each reported a renewal payment for a service. I didn’t recall such payments were due then. I found a phone number on the email to call if I had questions. I did and called the number.  I reported my wish to cancel the transaction.

So far, so good. I was asked to take action for the request to happen. I did what they asked. Then the process seemed to slow down, and I wondered why. I also wondered if the transaction was legitimate. That pondering led me to the conclusion that I was in the midst of a possible fraud.

I questioned the people I was dealing with over the phone. In the past all requests to cancel anything was verbal and they proved they had done as asked. The two instances referred to in this post were different. The calls turned into arduous, long delays, all after I had performed an action that seemed odd to me. In the first case I hung up the call. That worked instantly. No fraud was committed.

The second case was different. I finally hung up. I worried for a few hours and then opened my online bank account to check if anything was different. It was. $5000 was transferred from savings to checking. However, that is as far as they could go. This morning I reversed that transaction and my balances were back to where they belonged. No fraud.

Relief.

The lesson learned is this: if someone claims to have charged your account for any reason, check with the business by contacting them directly. Do not use the phone numbers on the email. Connect with them via their website or your own personal contacts. You will instantly learn that no such transaction was in process. Fraud instantly avoided.

Let me report that in the first case, PayPal was the ‘initiating’ business. They were not. In the second case, it was The Geek Squad. Both of these businesses have been held in high regard by me. I believed that a transaction was possible. That was the first step in my taking an active role in my own fraud.

I was lucky in both cases. I was not defrauded. Both cases, however, would not have been possible if I hadn’t believed in the businesses in the first place. The believability factor sucked me in. it was easy. Easy as pie.

I may be gullible to some degree because I work with others in an abundance of trust. That has been a key part of my career success for many decades. At my age, however, I need to trust less and suspect more. That is my lesson.

It should be yours as well if you haven’t already learned it.

July 1, 2024

 

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