How to Get Things Done with Bank of America/Visa:: The Saga Continues

Before you begin:
Bring your bank of america debit card to Denmark. Find out when you try to purchase lunch that your card doesn't work. Spend hours on the phone talking to visa and bank of america, and find out that your card was cancelled. But why would they tell you this? It's not like you're a customer of theirs or anything, and need to use your money.... Have visa send you a once-yearly available emergency international debit card, which is gold and looks like you printed it yourself with stick-on letters telling everyone that this is, in fact, a VISA GOLD CHECK CARD. Use this one until you get back to the US, whereupon you use it once or twice, and then it gets rejected from more stores than Gary Coleman's credit card. From this point on, follow the steps below.

Step 1
Call Visa. Talk to an unhelpful man who tells you nothing but "we don't know why it doesn't work" and to call your bank.

Step 2
Call the bank. Bank of america usually has pretty good customer service, but see if you can locate the most incompetent employee in their entire office of customer service reps. This way you are ensured the proper response of "your card isn't cancelled. It should work. They just had a server error." Ask them to be sure that it isn't because the card was issued in a foreign land, and then used here and shut off by other morons (whom you previously told, twice, for both the old card and this new china town-quality card, the dates you'd be away from and returning to the US), and Mr. Customer Support Genius will tell you "no, that's not it." Well, at least one of you is looking for reasons why your card doesn't work.

Step 3
Go try your card. Mr. Genius told you your card wasn't shut off, and that it'll work-- right? Wrong. It still doesn't work.

Step 4
Head home and call the bank. Again. Talk to Terell this time, who thinks it is in fact NOT normal for your card to work on some purchases and randomly deny others. Terell takes the step above and beyond Mr. Genius' wildest dreams of employee competence and, WOW, looks for a pattern in the failures. He finds (after mere seconds of pondering at the level achievable by most chimpanzees-- no offence to Terell, in all fairness he didn't have to ponder long) that the card works as a debit- when a PIN is entered, and fails when used as a credit card. SO. He asks me if I'm still at the store (I'm not) or if I have to make any online purchases (I don't) and that he usually likes to help people while they're still in the store (the man likes immediate results!) so he can see if it works, but he'll reset my card and that I should try it at another location once again, everything should be fine, but even if it doesn't work it will still work at ATMs and at places where I can use my PIN.

I have yet to try this last part, but I trust Terell, who seems to be the only employee at Bank of America showing signs of sentient life. Other than Georgia, that is, at the Bank of America headquarters for international issues in Atlanta (I know.... Atlanta... Georgia.... it's like she was born to be there. To assist me.) who helped me for over an hour on the phone while I was in Denmark, nearly in tears at being overseas and having zero access to my money, being thousands of miles from a bank I knew, and having no friends who had enough resources of their own to lend me any serious amount of money. She took pity on me and wished me, with much honesty, the best of luck with Visa and with getting a new card in Copenhagen. Georgia must be a magic witch doctor, because I had my new (canal-street-looking) visa card in hand, via private courier to our Copenhagen apartment, within 18 hours. I wonder if she knows Terell.

day 2 of classes.... and the 'to do' list grows.

I'd just like to say that as I write this, i am exhausted, i have a head ache, its stuffy in my room, and the jerks who live in teh building behind us are blasting heavy metal head banging (perhaps against a wall?) outside music and smoking, making it impossible for me to open my windows and take a nap. Gee, how I love new york.

I had jewelry this morning, with the most cheerful woman i've ever met. She is friendly and open to us doing more complicated projects if we have experience (i do) which is good. I'm going to have to spend a lot of money on supplies this semester, it seems, between furniture, jewelry and silk screen which I'll get to next. Our first project in jewelry is to do a cuff bracelet that involves no soldering. we can use rivets, we can use ribbon, cloth, etc, to attach things, but it has to be a cuff with no solder involved. She showed us slide of earlier students' work and a lot of them were really good. I've got some planning to do before i go out and buy my materials and tools though because I don't want to waste any money. Which is sitting in the bank with me unable to retrieve it because god damn bank of america/visa cancelled my BACKUP card since it was issued to me in DENMARK, which I only had to get anyway because they cancelled my REGULAR card while i was overseas. I'm going to call visa tomorrow and give them a piece of my mind.

Anyway. Silk screen seems like it'll be a lot of work, he said it's more like a 4 credit class than the 2 it really is. But i'm not a print sutdent, I don't really do 2D, i'm not looking to make works of art. I'm just looking to learn the technique and use it in my other projects, like on my furniture. I also have no idea what I would print pictures of, like I said I don't really do that sort of thing, so we'll have to see. Luckily Carolina has screens and tools she said I can use, so I don't have to drop too much more money on that stuff.

It looks like I'm going to be suuuuper busy this semester, and i's only tuesday! Tomorrow I have abnormal psych, which I'm really really looking forward to (even if we have lots of reading for that class, it'll be interesting to me!) and then thursday I normally have design again, but we're going to see the felt show at the MoMA, and then it's the WEEKEND!! and I can spend lots of money on supplies and buy lots of groceries!! Because right now all I own are spices, flour, and the chicken i made for lunch.

Lots to do.