The Trip to OH"HELL"IO--Chapter One

Now before I say another word I want to make it perfectly clear that no, I don't make shit like this up!

Everyone knows already that Hubs and I attempted a small vacation after dropping #2 Son at summer camp about a week ago.  We were already out on the opposite end of the state, so why not hop over the border into Ohio and meander around, eat some food and see some stuff we don't see everyday over here in our part of Pennsylvania.
No dogs, no kids, no schedule and no cares.
Sounds good, doesn't it?
Hubs had the week off so we were ready to go!

 So let's begin this saga the week previous....the week that the nephew was suppose to graduate from high school.(Totally not getting into THAT again here!) *If you feel you need the back story on that before proceeding, go read it HERE.

The previous week.....ah yes!....The week my Hubs siblings were here, being all up in our business and family-like.
Before hub's sister left town to go home, one evening, I made motel reservations at 2 different motel chains for our Ohio trip.
1 night at one, 2 nights at another.
I made the reservations online.
On secure web pages for each chain since they require your personal info.(like name, address)and your credit card number.  *Ah!....I see you know where I am going with this, don't you?

This is the first time I had used my credit card to purchase anything online in months and months.  I usually use Paypal to pay for anything online and I don't fund that with the credit card, ever!

A few days later, on June 10th I went to our credit card's online site to check whether the statement for our account had cut, so I could record the statement amount and plug in when I wanted to pay it(in full)online, within the next 3 weeks before it was due.

I found a charge on the bill that was highly suspicious for a large online music downloading site that will remain anonymous, called the iTunes Store.

The charge was 3 figures.
Neither Hubs or myself download music or anything else from there.
I asked if any of the kids had gotten our credit card number(highly unlikely)and had done that.
Nope.....no one had.
So I opened a dispute for that charge and made a note to pay the statement(less that charge)when we returned from Ohio.

And then the UPS man showed up at our door on Friday the 15th....less than 2 days before we were slated to leave.
And he had a package for us.
A package in a plain brown box that Hubs and I opened.
A package with a sex toy in it.

And no, I am not going to show you a picture of a sex toy here.


At this point, all the bells and whistles went off in my head.

And I ran to the computer to check our credit card account again.

And that's when I saw that the 3 figure bill at the iTunes store was just the beginning of our woes.
The account had been billed since the 10th for another 3 figure charge from the iTunes Store, for a Groupon and there was the bill for our new "adult" toy also.

This scumsucking loser didn't change the shipping address to himself when he billed us for the "toy".
Or he had it shipped to us on purpose, as his way of telling us he was "dicking" around with our credit account.

Well, we immediately had to put in a call to the credit card company and they shut down the account.
So with a day and a half to go until we left town, we had no credit card and even overnighting us new cards, we wouldn't get them before we left town.

I spent Saturday morning, before the bank closed arranging for a prepaid Visa card so we didn't have to cart a sack of cash to Ohio with us to pay for motel rooms, meals, gas, etc.
I have a debit card but it isn't hooked up to our primary account so it didn't have access but to a couple hundred dollars.  I don't use ATMs and I don't like to use debit cards so we never activated the ones the bank sent us.

So we worked around this complication but it put us on a tight budget for the trip.

We filed the appropriate fraud forms with the credit card company and the wheels of justice are moving slowly to resolve the situation.

Someone working at either of the corporate online reservation centers who would have access to our credit card info. when I booked those motel reservations is the obvious person responsible for some criminal skipping through the online world with our account number.  Since the credit card company shut the thief down I doubt the credit card company will follow through, apprehend and prosecute them.

Be assured that I will be writing to the corporate customer service of both motel chains to let them know that either of them has a possible theft ring operating within their walls.
And that unless they make the appropriate noises and convince me that they are taking this seriously,  I'll never reserve another accommodation with them...EVER!
Plus I'll name names...*cough*Clarion.......*cough*Best Western..... and let all my readers and twitter followers know. ;-)

So we are not even out of the driveway and have already been put through this credit card fraud and sex toys.
Oh, this trip just gets better and better!

Part 2 tomorrow......

Sluggy