The joys of credit

So today was the day that the Jellybean was to be repaired. And it was. Only surprises were a pair of new swaybar ends and a tierod end, both of which are kind of important.

All told the cost came out to roughly $1090, expensive but well within my means. Or so I thought.

I pulled out my credit card, which I had mentally calculated had about $900 in charges so far (leaving about $1400 of credit) and charged it.

Denied.

I was rather surprised at this, to say the least. I figured maybe there was a per-transaction limit, so I had the guy try $999 instead, which was also denied.

I was rather put off by this, so the fellow called up the credit card company and handed me the phone. I spoke to the friendly phone jockey who hadn't quite trained away her indian accident, and she informed me that I had over $500 of outstanding charges on my card, thus insufficient credit to make this particular payment.

She read off the pending charges for me, which included a few low dollar amounts that I was expecting, plus an unexpected charge at a "luggage store" for $399.55.

Obviously I haven't bought $400 worth of luggage recently, and my first thought was that maybe someone at the university had copied down my CC number when I faxed in a request for a school verification letter. Those students have sticky fingers!

But the amount sounded familiar to me, and I quickly realized that when I had bought my driving gloves on Friday, the merchant had accidentally punched in one to many 9's, turning $39.55 into $399.55. Oops!

To skip ahead a bit, I called up the store and they were quite relieved to refund me the difference, as they had noticed the charge too, but didn't have my contact info to let me know.

Anyway, back to paying for my car repairs.

Now, the plan was for me to put the bill on my credit card to get the 1% cash back, then when the bill came in I'd transfer it over to my line of credit, then pay it off once I get a cash infusion from Apple.

Luckily I had my credit line account hooked up to my debit card, so I had him enter the amount, I punched in my PIN and... denied, again!

This time it was the daily withdrawal limit to blame, as the amount was over $1000 or whatever the limit is. In the end, I ended up putting $800 directly on the line of credit, and then the remainder on my MC.

What a pain. As a result, I didn't end up changing the insurance over, since I was having more than enough trouble spending money as it is.