Credit Card Blues

So I had a bad day. After coming home from the dentist who said I could either have the tooth extracted or have a fifth root canal I was in intense pain. The pain of a toothache seems worse to me than any other. Remember that movie with Dustin Hoffman “Marathon Man” where he is tortured by a Nazi with a dentist’s drill? I do. Every time I go into my friendly dentist I remember. But that’s a story for another time. I was in agony that would make a lesser man cry like a girl. So I wiped the tears off my cheeks and sorted the mail. I opened the Visa bill. I just made a huge payment so it should have just a small balance. What the hell? Almost $5,000? It’s maxed out? How could this be? Well you probably guessed it. Seven fraudulent charges totaling more than $4000! Someone, apparently some frog leg eating snail slurper in France had swiped my poor innocent Visa card number from somewhere and gone to town. I can’t even figure out what this beret wearing wino bought. Oh I googled the names of some of the things he ripped off. $800 smackers to something called Podospecial Chesina Uzza. It’s all in Italian but from what I can tell it seems to be selling Dentist supplies. Is this too ironic for words? This French bag de le douche also spent more than $1300 at some place called Calleja Motocomponetes which I have to assume is something to do with cars. Good, I hope he crashes and gets French fried in his hot rod. Almost $400 bucks at France rugby. Enjoy the game Pierre. And the list goes on. Thankfully the story has a happy ending. Sort of. The credit card company eats the charges and issues me a new credit card. They were very nice about it. Then I got a chill down my spine. I also have an American Express card which has no spending limit. A quick phone call to Amex world headquarters showed that thank goodness no one had tampered with that one. But then the customer rep tried not only to sell me some sort of credit card insurance but also was really really sure I needed another Blue American express card. Lady, I said, because I am sure she was, I just had a credit card ripped off and you want to send me another one? You have to be joking, right? Wait a minute. Did she have a French accent?