That Jill. She's My Friend in the Tall Grass

I'm glad to know that I've had just enough calmness to not alienate Jill, the only Regions employee to even come close to helping me out.

So anyway, my sister went to the bank with me this morning, but first we discussed what we would do - close our accounts and leave? Yell and holler? We agreed the best thing to do was to work with Jill and get this behind me before burning all of our bridges.

When we walked into the bank, Jill was ready. She had already been looking at my account, and had printed everything out for me. She had even called the secret hotline and spoken to a secret person who had already hit the special green button to refund the fees and charges that had rolled in overnight.

I just checked my account, and the NSF refund is pending, rocketing my account balance straight up to a negative $21.16. Soon I can expect to be back at zero. Of course, I still haven't gotten any of the other fees and charges back yet, but - baby steps!

My sister and I had questions, and Jill did her job to the best of her ability.

"What about all those pre-authorizations", we asked, "how many are there? Can we make them stop? Why can't anyone see them coming? Why can't MEETIC just be blocked?"

Jill informed us that preauthorizations only last for 48 to 72 hours, so having the card closed should finally put an end to all that.

"But, I protested, "the charge I got hit with on the 13th was preauthorized on the 8th. That's five days."

"Oh. Yeah. I don't know...72 hours...I thought, well..." her voice trailed off hesitantly.

So then Jill recommends that we close the account entirely, but of course we can't do that to an account that's in the red - and besides, we don't want to do anything that will keep Regions from putting my money back into the account. Jill tells me that what she can do is change the account status to "no posts" - this means that nobody can post any charges to my account, with or without preauthorization. I can't write checks, use the ATM, or do anything in my own account without doing it in person at her desk now.

She assured me that an incoming credit from PayPal will make it through, and any payroll deposits.

I'm scared to believe it, and scared not to. I told her to go ahead and mark it "no posts". As I walked out the door, I wondered why it took so long to come up with that idea...but, no. Shake it off. Vent on the blog - not in the bank.

Now I wait.

If I had any money left, I might go to Sam's and buy a case of pencils to sell on the street corner.

I need some money!