If you don't check your bank statement.....You should!

Yesterday, I was balancing my checkbook and I saw a debit charge from Blockbuster.  At first, I thought nothing of it because we go there all the time.  Then I questioned it because I thought I saw the same charge the month before.  I checked the history and sure enough, there was the same amount exactly a month earlier.  Then I freaked, how long have I overlooked this?  Well, I checked January and there it was again, but not in December.


I check my account almost every other day, so you say.....Renee, then how did you miss this?  Well, we use blockbuster like crazy, it is our main form of entertainment and I am not exaggerating! We pay a monthly charge for blockbuster online and we get movies by mail and then take them to the store and trade them in for another movie at no extra charge.  Sometimes when we go in we will from time to time rent Ryan a game or get an extra movie.  The charges seemed high the first time I saw it, but I just thought Luther and Ryan got cokes or candy with it.  Then the second month, I just didn't realize it was the same exact amount as the last time.  Yesterday a light bulb went off in my head and I thought something was wrong. Well, boy was it ever.


I called my bank and they told me it was being debited off of Luther's card.  She told me to call Blockbuster and if they would not remove the charge, then Luther would need to close his card and get a new one.  I then called Blockbuster and the manager was not in.  The girl I spoke with looked up our account and said she could not find any charges on our account and she knew from the amount I gave her that is was a special movie pass program.  She asked if we signed up for it and I told her no because we have the online thing. She asked me to call the next day and speak with the manager because she thought our account looked odd.  I did double check with Luther and he said he didn't sign up for anything either.


Today, I called the manager and he found the same thing as her.  He also said our account looked odd because it only showed we traded movies in from online. He asked me for the last 4 digits of Luther's card and found that his card got linked somehow to another person's account with a similar name (O'Bannon).  He apologized and fixed the problem, then credited our account.  


So, if you look at your statement and it doesn't seem right, always question it.  One good thing from all this mess is because there were 3 monthly charges taken out of our account, the credit was a nice unexpected bonus!