Friday, August 12, 2011

The Benefits of a Public Education

So my sister Alice goes to stay in our family cabin over in Point Roberts for a week. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Pacific Northwest, Point Roberts is a little spur of land that belongs to the US but, through an accident of geography and politics, is completely isolated from the rest of the United States (insert snide comment about Washington, DC here). To get there you either take a boat or drive through Canada. It is, however, a part of Whatcom County, the same county she in which she lives.

While in Point Roberts, her debit card gets put on hold/suspended/frozen. She makes it through the rest of the week, probably living on frozen peas or something, and then, upon her return to Bellingham, drops by to visit her friendly local banker (are they still called bankers if they work for a credit union? Anyway...)

The advice she is given is...

wait for it...

she should probably contact the credit union before she travels so they don't flag her credit card activity while she's gone.

What? Anyone read the part where Point Roberts is in the SAME COUNTY as Bellingham?

Really. Like the "sugar coated Satan sandwich", you just can't make this stuff up. It's great.

1 comment:

Bou said...

NFCU isn't like that. They've put my card on hold before when during Christmas, a vendor did something wonky with my card. When I called they quickly took care of it. However, I travel with my kids a great deal in the summer, all over the SE, and never once have they flagged my card. I'm not even consistent in using it. Sometimes I use my only other credit card, an AMEX, so I literally jump 600-1200 miles in between uses at times. Never once.