TheBanyanTree: Bubbles

[Sachet]

I gots me this shiny new credit card. Because it gives me back 5% on gas 
purchases. Which is purty darn good, especially considering how much gas 
costs.

So yesterday I wanted to get my car washed (do notice the lack of r in 
wash. My son, dear child that he is, told me that I add an "r" when I am 
tired and forget to enunciate. Pffttt!) ;)

So I gathered my courage around me to enter the scary intimidating 
gauntlet of the car wash machine, remembering to keep my wipers OFF so 
as not to incite the wrath of the greedy grasping swirly things.

I went to my favorite car wash. Bubbles Car Wash is the name. It's this 
huge brightly lit see-through deal. Fascinates the easily~amused part of me.

I place my shiny new credit card (because I get extra points for using 
it on car related stuff) in the atm thingie and it is declined. Well, 
huh! I KNOW the card works because I just got gas with it the day 
before. Ok, fine, so maybe Bubbles doesn't take credit cards per se and 
only debit cards. So I tried my debit card and it worked. It was a 
puzzle but nothing that I thought about again.

Until later that afternoon the phone rings. It's my shiny new credit 
card company's FRAUD ALERT service. Automated, so that is both annoying 
and intriguing. Annoying, because I prefer to always verify facts with a 
live person, but intriguing because the oh-so-nice computer generated 
male voice is asking me to confirm an attempted transaction at Bubble 
Car Wash that was declined. I did and then I called and talked to a 
human bean to check out this new service. New to me anyway.

I get the human bean guy on the phone and he confirms that yes, their 
Fraud Alert service did indeed call me. I asked him why a mere $4 was 
declined. He explained that the computer program has models that it uses 
to set up parameters. He laughed when I told him that I guess Bubbles 
Car Wash didn't fit any known parameters. <g>

I love living in NC.  :-P 

...S~