A Peaceful Spot

A Peaceful Spot
Photo-A-Day #1289

I drive by this peaceful spot each morning that I go to the Framingham building. I always look over at it and want to stop and take a picture. Tonight Allison had me come and pick her up at her parent’s friends house. Their house is also something I pass each day on my way to work. Instead of picking them up we stayed for dinner so I am glad I stopped and got today’s photo when I did.

Preparations were in full swing today for Eva’s birthday party tomorrow. I went with our friend Mike to BJs and pick up the cake, some more soda, and very special ice cream for the party. I also made a change to the pizza order and checked on the cost of that set it for delivery instead of pick up and will have them deliver later so that people can arrive.

I got my letter for the credit card company written and hopefully in plain English they can see that being charged twice for the same meal, one month apart is grounds for a legitimate dispute. That was such a weird situation and I knew, I just knew that things would go afoul because of it.

This happened July 29 when I was in London. I went to lunch with a co-worker to a place called Baker Street Food Station that is across the street from Madam Tussads. We went through the line and got to the register and the credit card machine was not working. They were working on getting it fixed with the credit card company. We already had our trays filled with food and so we sat down and ate and waited to see of the credit card machine would be fixed. By the time we were done it was not fixed so I left them with my credit card information so they could bill me when the meal was over. Stupid, I know, but there was nothing else I could have done at this point.

I didn’t even know how much they were charging me either. Later that night we went to dinner near the restaurant so I ran over to get my receipt. It was on the middle of the roll so they couldn’t give it to me but the manager showed it to me. He even commented on how honest I was for coming back and checking on everything. I took a photo of the receipt with my camera.

Receipt

I wasn’t billed for this until my September statement. That’s fine I was billed the proper amount. Then I get my October statement and see that I was billed again. That was when I went to the credit card company. I explained everything above and disputed the charge. The other day I get a letter from the credit card company plus a letter from the Baker Street Food Station that the Baker Street Food station is strongly rejecting my chargeback. They explained exactly what happened that day and even put a P.S. to remind me of which restaurant they were. So therefore I needed to write my side of the story that they charged me twice. I can’t understand why the credit card company left out that detail. Sheesh.

You might also notice that I changed my comments so that they are no longer outsourced by coComment. The comments are integrated with coComment and I still like the service and recommend it to anyone who wants to track all of their conversations across the web. I also recommend signing up with retaggr (It integrates with coComment and is on my left hand sidebar.) I noticed a marked decrease in comments and I think it was because of the disappearance of commentluv and the comment e-mail responder and the ability to leave your name, e-mail and blog address. Well, it is back up and running that way so please comment away. Any credit card horror stories to share?

Also don’t forget that the Ultimate Fry Sauce Recipe Contest is in full swing. I have a bunch of great recipes already and want more.

I worked on each blog today including not one but two top secret ones. I know, I’m stretching myself thin again. The two secret ones are completely under construction and one will go online the 1st of the year. That one will be a year long experiment. The other will be revealed soon. I also put a favicon back up for the blogs. It had been missing ever since favatar disappeared.

Check out Read To Me, Dad for a cute little Eva video and some money saving tips.

14 thoughts on “A Peaceful Spot”

  1. I noticed a huge drop in comments too, but that is most likely due to this season, everyone is busy. It’ll be even quieter when all the holidays start rolling around. I am picking up my ingredients tommorow for the fry sauce, so keep watch out for that email. I dunno what I’m going to do differently then anyone else, but I’m gunna experiment. Should be fun. 🙂

    Chicas last blog post..I have been slacking hardcore!

  2. Thanks Chica,
    I totally screwed up my site design the other day, it is going to take some finagling but I will get it fixed as soon as I can. I’m looking forward to your fry sauce recipe.

  3. Karen,
    I hope it gets sorted soon too, this is ridiculous. If it doesn’t I’m going to have to spend much more time at the peaceful spot.

  4. Can a website charge a credit card that you have on file, one that has expired? This just happened to me yesterday. The Columbia House DVD club did it. They sent me a Director’s Selection DVD that I’d declined, and charged my card on file that expired in JUNE. How can they do that? This has GOT to be illegal.

    I happen to use that card for recurring monthly charges, for my Netflix and XM satellite radio subscriptions. Shortly before it was due to expire, they sent me both email and snail mail telling me that if I didn’t update my card info, my service would be suspended. I updated those. Columbia House also asked me to update, but I didn’t because I’d had issues with them before, charging me not only for DVDs I never ordered, but never received as well. I figured that would keep them from taking money from me because of their screwups. I guess I was wrong.

    But this is unethical. I’m figuring that they guessed the expiry date and charged the card, when I never authorized it. I will be calling them tomorrow during business hours and canceling my membership, and telling them exactly WHY. I also may write to our local news stations to see if they want to do a story on this very unethical practice. What they should have done was not sent me the DVD, just a letter or email saying that they could not send it because my card had expired. Crooks.

    Good luck in getting your money back. And I hope you’re all enjoying Eva’s party! 😀

    Christines last blog post..W0000000000T!

  5. I am also fighting a chargeback from a car hire place, having just come home from holiday in Italy.

    We were late getting our flight so I had to leave the car in a hurry with my card number as it needed about £5 of fuel to top it up. When I got my card statement I found they had charged me for a full tank plus some damage that was already on the car when we picked it up.

    Heopfully the card companies side with the customer on such matters.

  6. Cree,

    You would hope that the CC company would side with the customer because that is ridiculous. Good luck to you on that.

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