Nwanyioma's Journal

Since we're about to have a doozy of an ice storm that could last from tonight through Monday, I'll have plenty of time to do some more entries about our trip and to play around with the new photo features. I have a new entry in my Nigeria Journal. Please Click Here To Go There

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FINALLY   WELLS FARGO HAS PUT MY MONEY BACK IN MY ACCOUNT!


This nightmare went on from Wednesday night (1/3/07) until today! In spite of the fact that I made countless calls to both Wells Fargo and to Game Stop, no corrective action seemed to take place. What transpired is that I had to wait the three business days that it can take for a merchant hold to automatically fall off of the account.

Unfortunately for me the sale took place late Wednesday night, so the first business day was considered Thursday, the second business day was Friday...the weekend is not considered business time and then Monday was the 3rd business day. So in these wee hours of the morning Tuesday, those two merchant holds of $838.39 each finally fell off. My money is no longer being held hostage by two stupid systems that can't work with each other...a bank unwilling to believe it's customer who has banked with them for years without causing any problems....a customer who has her checking, savings and mortgage with them.

They claimed they couldn't do anything without the merchant calling in the request the holds be removed. But the merchant could never find anything in their records indicating that more than one transaction had ever taken place at the store....and the merchant could never find the authorization code given to them by the bank for the sale. And the bank would not release the two invalid merchant holds without the authorization code. Boy did I ever feel like a rat/hamster in a cage dealing with this one!

Believe me now I wish I had bought Ikenna the laptop he's been asking for...it certainly would not have cost me any more money than this did...and it certainly would not have brought on so much anxiety or so much wasted time!

If I didn't have two checks direct deposited at this bank and if I didn't have my mortgage with them, I would cancel this account. But I don't feel like going through the hassel of changing the direct deposits or trying to move my mortgage....but if anything like this ever happens again, I'll have to bank elsewhere!

Thanks for letting me vent!

Now if I can just get rid of this stupid cold all will be right with the world! 

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I had always planned to get back to my journal about my visits to Nigeria but I never did. I was going to pick up where we took Ikenna to Nigeria when he was 9 months old in 1993. That trip happened because while I was pregnant with Ikenna Levi's father died (Nov 1991) and my mother died (Jan 1992). My father had died many years earlier...so Ikenna had only one surviving grandparent. Levi's mother was aging and we wanted her to get to see Ikenna. Levi and I had been married for 11 years before Ikenna was born. His mother asked us many times when we were going to start a family. Levi was her baby and she was anxious for him to start his family.

I had no idea then that it would be 14 years before my next visit....that I would be divorced and Levi would be dead when I went back. Many changes took place in the village.....electrity finally came to the entire village....cell phones have exploded in Nigeria.....lost of new construction in the village. Funny how things seem to have improved in the village but they seem to have drastically worsened in Lagos....

I hadn't been out of the country at all in 14 years. I was even surprised to see how much the visas have changed. The last time I went you just had a stamp in your passport. Now the visas are actually pretty and laminated into your passport. Please click on the graphic of our visas below and I'll 'transport' you to my Nigeria journal for the entry.

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I thought we were in the computerized age but you would NEVER know it by the experience I’ve been having with Wells Fargo bank and Game Stop since Wednesday night!

Some history/background

My son didn’t ask for anything this Christmas. That was very unusual! But knowing we were going to be spending Christmas in Nigeria and not knowing how it would be celebrated there probably had a lot to do with it. My in-laws are devout 7th day Adventists. After their middle son was murdered in 1993, they became a lot more spiritual and a lot less ‘worldly.’

I knew Ikenna would want something electronic for Christmas. He knew I would not want to buy it here and travel with it and risk losing it/leaving it behind. He also knew we probably wouldn’t be able to buy anything he’d want over there. Back in September when we decided to make the trip we planned to celebrate Christmas when we got back home. As it turned out our family in Nigeria doesn’t celebrate Christmas as we do. When I asked one of Ikenna’s cousin’s about it she said they feel like they don’t know what day Christ was born, so they don’t do anything special on December 25th.  I did see some Christmas decorations at Lagos airport. We even saw someone dressed in a Santa Claus suit when we were there on Dec 21st flying from Lagos to Owerri. But there were no decorations in the village.  Technically speaking Ikenna did get something on Christmas Day. That happens to be that day that we had the ceremony at his father’s house and his uncle officially handed over to him his father’s house and lands.

Back to the two thousand dollar+ game system!  I had originally planned to try to talk Ikenna into wanting a Wii system instead of the PS3 because the Wii is much more reasonably priced. Before we left for Nigeria I knew that Ikenna was somewhat unhappy that he would be spending his entire Christmas break away from his friends and away from his comfort zone. As wonderful as our trip was, we both missed a lot about home in the States. On January 3rd he and I drove to our neighborhood Game Stop. The plan was for him to get some games for his PSP, his DS, his Game Boy, etc.  But once we got there I was so proud of how he handled things when we were away that I decided to buy him the new PS3. They actually had one in stock. The system is $599.00. It only comes with one controller and no games. So that Ikenna could enjoy it with his friends, I bought an extra controller for $49.00 and a game at $49.00. 

I don’t usually but the additional extended warranty plans, but I thought with the price of this thing, it would be a good idea. That warranty was $69.99. The sales person told me if we had one of their discount cards, we could save $5.00 on the game by buying a used game. That conversation was early in the sale and I had placed Ikenna’s discount card on the counter as the salesperson and I talked about other things. When he rang up the sale, which came to $838.89 and handed me the paperwork to sign, I asked him if he had taken off the $5.50 for the used game. He admitted that he’d forgotten and said he’d void the original sale and re do the new price of $832.94. That worked for me, I signed the new receipt, Ikenna was delighted to be getting his PS3 (which he knew he wouldn’t set up until the weekend because it was almost 8pm and he would be returning to school in the morning). Life was good until I went online later that night trying to order some tickets to a play and the sale wouldn’t go through. That didn’t make sense to me….until I went to Wells Fargo online and saw that my account was overdrawn by $1,300.00+.     As I looked further I saw there were THREE debits from Game Stop….two for $838.89 and a third for $832.94!!!! WTF I had just paid a total of $2,510.72 for that PS3!

I called the bank first…they told me I’d have to contact the merchant. By this time it was after 10pm and the merchant was closed. The bank gave me a lot of flack about how they understood what I was saying about the voided transaction not being processed properly but they said they couldn’t take MY word for it that it really was a void instead of a sale. I asked them how they could even let the transaction go through (I had used my debit card) when there wasn’t even that much $ in my account. They told me it wasn’t based on my balance…but on the limit given to my debit/check card!   Well, since this entry is getting long….I’ll abbreviate…I’m still fighting this battle. The store can’t find the approval code they were given for the sale, the bank won’t remove the two extra merchant holds without the approval code….the store doesn’t print the approval codes on the receipts and the additional $1,677.78 in charges won’t drop off automatically until after 3 business days! In the meantime my paycheck is direct deposited and that got screwed up by the overdraft when it went in early Friday morning and will be held hostage until this all gets straightened out.  I am so upset….part of me understands the bank’s processing, but the part of me that needs to pay bills and doesn’t have access to my money is PISSED.

If I wasn’t an honest person, I would have just called in and said there were some unauthorized charges on my account and the bank would have handled it differently. BUT because I told the truth that the merchant incorrectly has three merchant authorization holds for one sale, the bank is NOT working with me. Please Lord, don’t let this change me…don’t let me become a schemer to try and work around the system in the future if anything like this ever happens again! If I had only known how this would play out, I would have told the salesperson to keep the $5.45 I was trying to save on the used game….who knew that $5.45 would end up costing me an extra $1,677.78.

 And guess what……………Ikenna had a sleepover on Friday night. Three of his buddies were over…they set up the PS3. I asked him how he liked it….he said the system is great but he doesn’t like the game!?!#$*#)*$)!(*@)#(    So we’re going to return it probably today. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to set foot in Game Stop again for a very long time. I hope the salesperson I had on Wednesday night isn’t here, I might be tempted to strangle him….but I don’t want to spend 2007 and beyond in jail!

I'm going to try to write more about our trip later, but this has just been driving me crazy for a few days now and I had to blow off some of the steam!

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