Buster Brown and Chase

 

Tuesday was an unusual day here at the Boggy Thicket. 

I was paying bills on-line when I got a call from a lady at the bank.  She said that Chase security had discovered that my debit card had possibly been compromised and suggested that we cancel the card immediately.  I replied that I was only a keystroke away from using it to pay my phone bill, but okay.  She killed the card, and is sending me a new one (with a new number) that should arrive by UPS today.  She then reviewed the last month’s transactions to verify that they were all legitimate.

After we got off the phone, I used Honey’s card to pay the phone bill, then I went out to check the level in our propane tank.

I expected to see a level between 20 and 30%, so I was amazed to find the gauge at 77%. 

The propane they put in your tank is a liquid – the L in LP gas stands for liquefied – and what you burn is the gas that has boiled off.  Because of that, a propane tank is never filled completely – a “full” tank usually reads around 80%. 

I also found a receipt for a fill-up in late September that I was pretty sure I hadn’t ordered.  I brought the receipt in and logged back on to the bank website – no charge for propane in September. Then Honey noticed that the receipt said the fill-up had been charged not to Couch but to Graff. 

Our next-door neighbors had ordered propane and the driver had put it in our tank! 

I called Alesha Graff and told her what I thought had happened.  Sure enough, first thing Wednesday morning, a truck was at their house filling their tank.

A couple hours later, I got a call from a  lady at Buster Brown Propane.  She asked very nicely if I would prefer to pay them for the fill-up or would I rather they came and pumped the propane back out of my tank.  (That reads pretty harsh, but when she said it, it didn’t sound bad at all.)

I said we would pay for it, but there were two problems:

1) We qualify for a senior discount and the Graffs, who are young enough to be our kids, do not.  I was not going to pay the full amount on the bill.

and

2) My card number that they had on file had just been cancelled due to a security problem.

She was very gracious – said they would refigure the amount and send us a bill.  By the time I get the bill in the mail, I should have my new debit card and I can just call them with the new number.