Last night I attended the reading and puppet show by Mary Robinette Kowal, who was in town on her way to Chicago.  She stopped by Weller Book Works and, in a mostly period-correct gown, did an amazing job of reading from Chapter 2 of Glamour in Glass, as well as performing a puppet show called The Broken Bridge.

If you ever want to watch a master performer, and also feel bad about your own sad lack of reading skills (unless you happen to be Ken Scholes, I guess), be sure to catch Mary doing a reading sometime.  Put it on your bucket list.

After the reading and the puppet show, it was time for Q&A.  Here’s the game:

I snapped this picture of Mary while she was talking about something, but I won’t say what.  I want you to guess!

Look at the passion that comes through–what could the topic be?  [If you were there last night, don't give it away!]

Enter your guess in the comments below

Ready for the answer?  Here it is.

{ 2 comments }

Google it.

There are a lot of people angry with Experian over fraudulent charges, and I just became one of them.

There are two types of pissed off people:

1.) People who ordered their credit report for $1, and then canceled the scheduled credit monitoring charge, only to have that $19.95 charge appear month after month after month.

2.) People whose accounts get charged by Experian who NEVER SIGNED UP FOR ANY KIND OF SERVICE FROM THERE.

I am in the second group.  See, here’s what happens.

Some one, somehow (maybe through sheer guessing and entering random numbers: they have bots for that) gets your credit card number and enters it at Experian.com to get a free credit report.  If one does not cancel the credit monitoring service one is automatically enrolled in a $19.95 per month service.

Experian.com is a CREDIT MONITORING SERVICE.  Do you understand how cosmically stupid that is?  They do not require any more details than the 16 digit credit card number to charge your card.  Kind of gives you a lot of confidence in their ability to monitor your credit if they have thousands of these fraudulent charges, right?  Fail.

So I called them, and after a lengthy hold, talked to a nice woman who helped me reverse the charge and cancel any future charges.  Hopefully this works, but with the shady way they operate, one never knows.  You can be sure I’m watching my pending charges like a hungry dog watches a box of snausages.

If you’re searching for how to get this problem fixed, because you also got charged:

Here is how to get Experian.com charges reversed

- Call (714) 830-7000 for Experian customer service.  You will probably put on hold right away for nearly 10 minutes.  Suck it up and stay on the call.

- Tell them why you called (fraudulent charges appeared on your credit card account

- Stay on hold as they transfer you to the department that handles this.  Funny story: they could not tell me the direct number of this department when I asked.

- Tell the person very clearly there is a fraudulent charge on your account for a credit report, and you want the $1 charge reimbursed, as well as MAKING SURE THAT NO FURTHER CHARGES APPEAR.

- Tell them you know that after a 7 day trial period you will be charged $19.95, and you want to make sure that doesn’t happen because YOU DID NOT PURCHASE ANY SERVICE FROM THEM AND THIS IS FRAUD.

- Sit through the part where they ask you if you know the first name of the person who initiated the charge (mine was Carla), and say, nicely, OF COURSE I DON’T.  THIS IS A FRAUDULENT CHARGE.

- Stay on hold while they talk to their supervisor.  They will return and tell you everything is good to go.

- Try not to ask them if they know how eternally STUPID AND/OR HILARIOUS it is that a credit monitoring company has such a problem with credit card fraud.  One of your best weapons in situations like this is being FIRM but NICE.

- Then call your bank, and let them know what’s up.

Hope it works for you.  Hell, I hope it works for me, too.

{ 0 comments }