yahoozee

Last Christmas, I was rocking in places like Bacchus & 6 degrees North, Volar, No 10, Caliente etc… mainly to the tune of Olu Maintain’s Yahoozee but little did I think that dem yahoozee people wey dey UK fit do me 419 this Christmas!

Today I panicked when I checked my account and saw and an unknown debit… with work paying my December salary in at the end of this week on Friday, and me leaving on the country on Thursday, I started thinking I for just come back from Lagos see say dey don clear my account finish…

I don’t know why God told me to check my account today…at first, I was like why is the ID for that transaction written weirdly as ‘WWW.TOTALLYSHOES.C, O.UK’?… then a small light bulb came on and I was like I don't know them so why have they taken money from my account?… I clicked to investigate further and then I was like hell no…uh uh… I didn’t buy anything last week on the 11th.

So I called the bank and found out that on Thursday, after I had endured my 2nd pointless meeting of the day at work (I guess I should back track and correct that because the 1st meeting was quite necessary and it proved useful)… @ 13:58, my bank card was used to buy something off ‘http://www.totallyshoes.co.uk’... I assumed this to be the real website address sha because the one above didn’t make sense…

Now with only 3 days before I was to leave for naija… I had to cancel my bank card… I checked all the pending transactions on it and confirmed the remaining were mine… they were thank goodness… I confirmed that the bank could report it as fraud to the police… I then started to look for my oga to say I’d be finishing work early today to enable me to get to the bank before it closed to make a bank declaration…

I’d been spitting mad since I looked at my account… I’m normally so cautious… who likes being ‘had’?… not me.… I remember laughing long and hard at an oyinbo guy at work about three years ago who got hustled… for lack of common sense IMO… he and his partner accepted £5000 from a nigerian asking them to transfer about £50,000 into a nigerian's account for the promise of £100,000… na so money just dey rain from the sky?!… I wasn't surprised to hear that in the end they got nothing back in return… the cheque bounced… but after loosing £45,000 the police started investigating them for money laundering activities… me, I don't want wahala so I promptly report all suspect e-mails as phishing scams.

To protect myself from opportunists, I take precautions such as shredding all my card receipts… I never send my banking details in e-mails... I only do internet banking from work because of the nature of the secure work we do… same goes for internet shopping… I've signed up for secure online card verification systems with all but one of my cards and that is only because they are yet to offer it. I rarely do internet shopping with that bank card but I did err two weeks ago and then I ended up cancelling the order because the company was useless…

So upon all my precautions I sat at my desk completely miffed… the recurring question in my head was... of all the cards to all my accounts…why e be de account dat my salary dey enter dem go put hand enter, comot carry go?… I know people can beat the system but I felt so violated… I kept thinking thunda fire their yansh 1 millions times over…

I also felt bloody insulted… I would never shop on that site… not my style… not at all… I get taste better pass dat o but how I fit use dat theory as proof for bank?… I know say I no fit.

Then I started thinking maybe they’d be able to track them down with the delivery address used for the purchase…yes, perhaps… and I hope they lock them up and throw away the key when they find them… I just wanted my money back.

As I got to the end of this post I started thinking of all the things I was yet to get for myself and others for my trip to Lagos… I’d made a list and my eye caught a glimpse of one of the things I had gotten already… yoghurt for the kids… this time a big 1000 watt light bulb came on in my head with a very loud ‘ping’… I remembered an internet transaction I’d made on 11th December @ 13:51 for yoghurt mix… no no no no… but it was with a company called fraser simpson… they sent me an e-mail saying the transaction would show as ‘Totally Commerce Ltd’ not ‘WWW.TOTALLYSHOES.C, O.UK’… WTF?!!!

I’m going to call fraser simpson and check but the amount is the same and the time stamps kinda match so I guess it was probably me afterall… lol…

If it is I’ll call the bank back and explain… to think that all that wahala was for nothing… & I'll still have to wait for a new bank card no matter what, which won't arrive before I leave for Lagos… *shakes head*… I did all that for nothing…

Where is Afrobabe?… Afro… Afro… you sure say no be you wan do me juju like this because I no dey carry you go naija with me for Christmas?!!!