Well not exciting is ordering a $1300 ham radio. For that much you’d figure you’d get a bit better service. But I got an email about six hours after the credit card was declined. I called the store and asked, “Why was my card declined?” They didn’t know. Now, I worked at a mail order chocolate store for about three weeks one Christmas break. A fancy chocolate mail-order store. I know what kinds of things the credit card machine spits out. Bad number. Bad expiration date. Bad check digits. Bad address. Etc, etc. Part of the benefits of packing fudge for three weeks.

But the store didn’t know what was wrong with my order. They were kind of confused about it, too. “Uh, we don’t know.” Did you see any error codes? “Uh, we don’t know.” Does the machine give you error codes? “Uh, we don’t know.”

So I called the credit card company and they told me that it was an unusual purchase, so they disapproved it. I didn’t find out that they disapproved it until I got home, found the message on my answering machine, and called them back. Now why do they call my home phone? If I’m using my credit card, I’m most likely not there.

Anyway, the store charged my card on Friday because we weren’t going to risk another credit card company screw-up. The radio is going to ship some time after the company gets through counting their inventory.