USE CASH!

And here I thought that I'd be dormant on blogging for a while. Guess not.

I can't believe what restaurants and other businesses are putting the public through. For some reason they put in a charge twice to secure the bill or they charge the first charge without the tip and then again with the tip. They retrieve only one in the end, but they freeze your funds for at least 3 days. So unfair because it's YOUR money and you can't use it.

The bank says that it is a way for businesses to protect themselves. Maybe so. OR it could be a way to play with your money. I really don't know how exactly it works but even if the restaurant can't touch it either, it is ridiculous. In this day and age there should already be something more accurate than this bullshit. It screws the client no matter what. It is of no benefit to us whatsoever. It sucks that the government keeps telling us to turn the wheels of the economy by spending as much as we can outside our home, especially in restaurants. How can we do this if they screw us this way. Why should I go out of my way and go to an atm to take out cash just because of their thieving ways? It should be illegal.

I have had several different experiences of this kind. These are the 3 that I remember at the moment:

1. Gas station - Not sure but I think it was a Valero. Paid outside with my card. Used 10 dollars only as that week I was running low on funds. I usually check my bank every day and luckily this was one of these days. To my surprise, I see a pending charge of 50 dollars plus the 10 dollar charge on my card. I'm like WTF? So I call the store and the lady (very nice lady) tells me that I need to call the 1800 number as they have nothing to do with those charges. They use their cashier but it's the gas company's card policies so I have to call them. I get the 1800 number and call them. The lady that answered very unsympathetically told me that it's the way it is, they have to protect themselves from fraud and if I don't like it to use cash next time. That there was nothing I could do but that it would clear soon, so not to worry about it. I felt the racism in her tone. I felt like she was telling me that they needed to protect themselves from thieving Mexicans like me. So I told her very politely, "I wanted to buy 10 dollars of your prestigious gasoline, not 50. If I wanted 50, I would've charged 50 and had I known this would've happened, I would not have used your company, there should be a sign warning people about this." She tried to interrupt telling me the money would come back to me; so I told her that it didn't matter because until I got that money back, I would starve since that's pretty much all I had left. It's MY money and they're taking it from me, they're taking away MY food. If I wanted to save 50 dollars and use them 3 days later, I could do that on my own. I don't need to be forced into something I don't want. I told her that I wanted to talk to a manager and that the customer service she was giving me sucked and that I worked in media and this could be bad for them if it go out, at least in the town I lived in. She told me she'd get a manager. She put me on hold and left me there for 15 minutes until I decided to hang up. The next day the hold was gone. So I KNOW they CAN release it as soon as 24 hours. 50 dollars to make sure you have funds, even though I only charged 10 was just ridiculous. They either changed gas companies at Valero or they changed their policy because I charged there again (on purpose) and it hasn't happened yet.

2. Cosmos Bar & Grill - Now don't get me wrong, this is a very decent place. The drinks are nice and the food is very tasty. A little on the pricey side but worth it. That is until they screwed us by charging us twice. Well, not really twice, they froze the amount we owed without the tip and they charged the amount with the tip. Bear in mind this was on a Friday so all weekend long we had 2 pending charges, the correct and the incorrect one. This was, of course, unbeknownst to me as I had perfect calculations of how much money we had left (which wasn't much). It wasn't until we tried to charge something with that particular card, something stupid like lunch, that we realized something was wrong because it didn't go through (I purposely have that card arranged to not make any overdraft charges). We used the backup card thinking it was the restaurant's mistake. I go online to our bank account to see that OH surprise, Cosmos fucked us. I was a bit miffed about this because being a party of more than six, we automatically got charged with the tip, so why did they go ahead and make both charges? It made no sense. X called Cosmos to check WTF happened and they told him that it happens sometimes. BLAH BLAH, same story. Well, the charge with the tip (the correct one) went through late Monday afternoon, but the other charge didn't come back to us until Thursday morning. Almost a WEEK!! TOTAL BULLSHIT. I swore never to use a card at a bar again. ANY bar.

3. Stingray Alley restaurant - PURE STUPIDITY. We went this past Saturday to take the kids to this place. We had been there before and they have decent food, but it's the place that makes it nice to eat there. The place is decorated like Daytona, drag race, etc.. (not too familiar with the sport, so I really wouldn't know a correct title for it). Beautiful place. You can tell they really invested a good chunk of money into it. They don't serve alcohol because they don't have a license, so we knew with no temptations for a beer it would come out cheaper. And it did. Or so we thought. The bill for a party of 5 came out to 43 dollars so imagine my surprise when I saw 2 charges pending one for 43 and the other one for 433.00. WTF????????? Of course I saw this until Sunday when the place isn't even open. So today I called my bank first thing and they told me that I needed to fix it with them. So THEY fuck up and I need to fix it. Jeez. Today I had a training I needed to attend at work so X had to take care of it. I believe they were doing everything they could to drop that charge immediately. I'll check the bank in a bit to see if they have. I, fortunately, have some money saved up and I transferred some to make sure the rent check wouldn't bounce. But what if I didn't have that backup? I'm sure the restaurant would've paid the bank charges and my landlord if it came down to it; because if they didn't I would have involved the police. Still, most people don't have savings or emergency money backup. I was also very pissed off about the way they handled it. They KNEW what happened and they said NOTHING and we kept charging that day. It is a known fact that most banks will let the big check in and let the small charges follow, that would've been at least 150 extra in overdraft charges. I think it was very unprofessional of the waitress not to inform us. According to the manager when X spoke to him, he remembered what had happened and he said that he really thought it hadn't gone through, since they immediately retrieved it. Well, apparently they need to get some sort of training on it because they have no idea how their own banking works. And they should.

So to sum this up, I will try to use cash more. That sucks because I like using the card. It keeps me organized. It allows me to see exactly where my money is going and I like that. I have more control this way. I'll save the card usage for grocery and apparel shopping; at least as much as I can. Just be careful out there. You might want to ask what the policies are before you swipe your card next time.