Don’t Panic…Panic…Don’t Panic…Panic

I’m only about 5 hours into my day and its already been on the ludicrous side of cray-cray.  Before I even got my first sip of coffee I’d fluctuated between joy thinking of the upcoming two months that I can sleep in to dread, knowing I had to go grocery shopping (most hated household task) after dropping the kiddo off at school.

Then opening up my email I see an order confirmation for an order I didn’t place on an account I haven’t used in over a year.  I open a new browser window and manually pull-up the store’s website to find there really was an order and after checking my banking site, realizing most of my cash is now tied up on hold for this order.  I spent a frantic few moments printing the order info, cancelling the order, changing my password and removing my banking info from that site.  I checked the shipping information for this order and though it had my name and phone number on it, the ship to address was in another state and completely unfamiliar to me.

I notice on a sidebar of their website that their company name was used in a phishing scam a few days prior, but I never received the phishing email so my account information wasn’t put at risk by me.  In addition, as you can tell from the procedure I followed when getting an order confirmation from a company I haven’t ordered from in a year, I know better than to click on links in an email.  Seems simple, right?  The bogus order wasn’t caused by me falling for a phishing email because I never got one.  (I even ran three different security programs to make sure it wasn’t due to a malicious bit of software on my end.)

Apparently not so simple.  This company was so focused on the phishing scam that the reps couldn’t seem to get past it to understand this was another issue.  It took four emails, two phone calls and five hours of my life to get them to understand that it was a problem on their end and to close my account completely effective immediately.

To top it all off, you would think that a company that had fraudulent orders placed on its customer’s accounts would want to pursue this legally.  Nope.  I was told that since I caught the order before it shipped that it was my problem.  My bank also stated the same thing.  After some research, the process to even investigate the problem would be to report it to my local sheriff, then the DA would have to bring in the state’s bureau of investigation who would then have to involve the FBI since the shipping address was not in my state.  I’m left questioning if its even worth it.

In the middle of all this, I get a call from our dentist to make cleaning appointments.  It would have taken less time to make the appointments than it did to try to explain to the lady that it wasn’t a good time.  I’ve spoken with telemarketers that were less pushy.  I’m also mentally going through my wardrobe to assess if I have something clean and wrinkle-free to wear to my son’s elementary school graduation/awards ceremony tonight, figure out if we’ll have time to eat before, should I have dinner ready or should we eat out,  sign for some FedEx packages, unload and put away groceries, eat breakfast, fold clothes and the zillion other mommy/wife things I have to attend to on a daily basis.  And deal with internet fraud.  Ain’t nobody got time for that.

So what company did I have this problem with and that you’d think would take their internet database security a little more serious?  Walmart.

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