Ya know, the past couple of months have been the toughest I have experienced in a long time, and this week has already been a fucking terrible week. Recently, I lost my apartment, and I am living with my in-laws until I can get back on my feet. There are now eight people living in the house I live in, all of them struggling with money, including my fiancee, Ellie and I. We sleep on a pull out couch in the living room, which is totally fucking lumpy and killing my back. I know, I know, its a damn sight better than living in my mid 1980s saab (which is actually quite roomy, we probably could live in the car pretty comfortably), but still, my back has been killing me. I wake up and I am in pretty terrible pain for the first couple of hours of the day.
To add to that stress, our finances are a complete and total mess. Ellie and I both experienced major tuition increases switching from community college to university. This term we got a total of 1500 dollars taken away from us, just in tuition and fee increases. We held on to our place for as long as we could, but finally we just had to let go of it. There was no saving it, we just couldn't afford the 430 dollars a month any more. The job search has been slow too. For a while, Ellie and I were able to survive just on financial aid, but now it is imparative that we at least some semblance of part time, weekend work...but there is a few problems we keep running into: first, her and I have both been unemployed for a while, and in this job market that is a tough sell. The second problem we run into is that we are only available on the weekends....the weekdays for us are simply too busy with school and homework. I am barely keeping a float now, without a job. There simply isn't enough time for us to go to school, do the amounts of homework her and I do on a daily basis, find time for a personal life, and work a part time job during the week. There isn't enough hours in a day. There just isn't.
To add insult to injury, I have an old chase account that I use for automatic payments to pay bills. One of those bills, when we used to have money, was my monthly membership to Xbox live for my Xbox 360. When we had the money, this expense was nothing -- just 9.99 a month for netflix and access to the Xbox marketplace, to download videogames at a fee charged to the debit card. I sold the xbox in October of 2011 to a pawn shop because we had come up against money issues, and I thought that was the end of it. This January, charges from xbox live marketplace start showing up in my bank account. About 120 dollars worth of games were bought from my checking account without my permission. No big deal, I thought, I can just dispute the charges through chase and be done with it. So I disputed the charges and got a provisional credit from the bank, I called xbox and they shut down my account and said they would be in touch with the bank. I thought that was the end of it, I got my money back and that was that.
A few days ago I went to withdraw 30 dollars from that account, because our other account at the credit union was depleted of funds. We only had about 70 dollars any way, so we already were facing some sort of financial crisis, its just we could survive another few weeks of the 20 mile commute to Western Oregon University. I get to the branch, and they tell me my account is overdrawn. I ask them what happened and they showed me a print out....the "fraud department" had reversed the provisional credit out of my account because they couldn't "prove" fraud. Well, clearly, there was fraud on my account. I didn't authorize the charges to the account. The banker told me to take it up with the merchant if I wanted a refund.
So I call xbox live once again....I explain to them that I just want my money back, I am not looking for a handout. They get me over to their fraud investigators, and the investigator for microsoft tells me to file a police report and call with the report number and they will refund my money. Later that night I contact the local police non-emergency phone number and spend about 10 minutes on the phone with a local police officer. He said that the police would investigate and try to arrest the person who was using my card for fraud. He also gave me a police report number which, I thought, would enable me to get a refund through xbox.
This morning, I check my chase account to make sure I knew how much it was overdrawn. When I went into the branch, it was only overdrawn by about 30 dollars, but this morning it was overdrawn by 74.99! I opened up my online banking account to see what transaction could have possibly posted to my account (I turned off my debit card when I discovered the fraud, there should be no transactions posting at this point besides money I withdrew from the bank) and the description of the charge says it all "Non-sufficient funds for an attempted 30 dollar withdrawal at the branch in Keizer, OR"
THEY ARE CHARGING ME A NON SUFFICIENT FUNDS FEE FOR ATTEMPTING TO WITHDRAW 30 DOLLARS AT A BRANCH!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!!?!
I went from being 70 dollars in the good, to being 70 dollars in the hole without ever spending a dime of it. This was my last fucking 70 dollars. My last. Fucking. Seventy. Dollars. IS GONE! Poof! Like that! Bye-bye....
So, in an attempt to once again make myself whole, this morning I spent an hour trying to give xbox the police report number so they could refund my money. Xbox has to open another investigation and I guess call Keizer PD and verify my story. They said it would take 7-10 business days to investigate, and even then there was no guarentee I would get a full refund. How is that for a fucking kick in the crotch. I get MY MONEY STOLEN from my checking account, and I HAVE TO BE INVESTIGATED????? Jesus christ, what a few weeks its been.
And here my fiancee and I are...trying to do the right thing, going to school and looking for jobs, and we still get knocked in the teeth....for what? Absolutely fucking nothing.
I have no way to get myself to school beyond whats in my gas tank at the current moment, I am not living at my own house, I can't afford food, I can't find a job and my last 70 bucks was stolen right out of my bank account. Like I said, its been a bad week.
But I feel a bit better :)
3:49 PM PT: quick update: my paypal is rexymeteorite@gmail.com