Sunday, January 9, 2011

I spent all of yesterday and today until eleven reading an account of Pepys's diary from 1660 until 1667/1668, which is when the site publishes his diary day by day in step with our own dates. Often I dipped into the actual diaries, into annotations by other readers, or notes on wikipedia.
Before Christmas I donated a small sum to wikipedia and they returned a note to me asking for a contribution month by month. Unfortunately this was made on my old credit card. During the holiday I discovered a payment on that card to what appeared to be a BP gas station in Fort Erie. I reported the suspected fraud to the credit card company, which promptly refunded the payment and cancelled my card. Yesterday I received my new card, but all pre-authorised payments are therefor cancelled too. I don't have a list of whom I have pre-authorised moneys to and have no way of re-contacting wikipedia, unless I make a new payment to them uninvited somehow.
Incidentally, it was not a fraud. I had had forgotten a payment to BP magazine for a year's subscription. I don't think of the magazine by its name as I regard it as "the bi-polar" magazine. So I needn't have cancelled my credit card in the first place. Grrr.
This blog is reverting to a personal diary. If I do still have any readers, I completely understand if you delete following me. It can only interest myself some time from now, and maybe not even do that.

1 comment:

marc aurel said...

This changing of the card has proved quite useful. I had signed up for audible books and downloaded their first free trial offer. I did not find it easy to listen to amid the hub bub of my house and thought I would not pursue it. They contacted me to say that they could not extract a fourteen dollar monthly fee from my credit card. I had not noticed that fee and would never have signed on for a payment for nothing scheme. I'm a little dissapointed with Amazon for being associated with such an untransparent scheme. If it had been like Netfix, it might have been attractive, but you had to pay book prices on top of the 14 a month, just to listen to a book once. Dare I say "Rip Off"?