It’s been a couple of weeks for me.
Not really rough, but tiresome.
Last week, the Fraud Department of one of my credit cards contacted while I was on the way to the car service people. Someone was trying to book a 4K stay at a luxury resort in Wyoming using the card I’d just pulled out of the safe for the car repair.
Great!!! Just what I needed. More annoying was that Apple and CarPlay won’t let you press or select any numbers while driving.
Know what that means? If you’re stuck in traffic and have something like this happen, you can’t get through the fucking phone tree. “Please make a selection… Please make a selection… Please make a selection… Please make a selection… Please make a selection… Please make a selection… I didn’t hear anything, Goodbye!”
I haven’t found out if it’s a setting I can change in the phone or if this is some “New” feature. I turned off CarPlay, dug my earbuds out of my pocket, put them in, then dialed the number again. This time I could press buttons and was breaking the law doing it. I also wasn’t able to use the fancy built in functions in my damn car like hands free interfaces and the Microphones and speakers built into the car.
Very annoying! What are business people who are reliant on entering extensions, or even pressing 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, 3 for Hindi, 4 for Farsi supposed to do? There are people that make a living going from client to client all day long. How are they supposed to call a client to say they’re hung up in traffic and will be an hour late?
Unintended consequences! Someone didn’t think this through.
Did a quick search and it appears this is some bullshit thing that the car manufacturers did. BMW, Kia, Ford, Hyundai, Subaru, and others customer’s are all bitching about it in IOS 18. I’d seen it once before, and had also noticed I couldn’t scroll through my contacts list anymore either.
Sometimes Siri, and the BMW voice recognition just doesn’t understand what you’re saying due to traffic / road noise. Try getting Siri to understand you while you’re sitting next to an Idling big rig, or someone in the car next to you rattling your teeth with their overly amplified bass music. That happens all the time in epic Southern California traffic jams.
What’s the point of a safety feature that forces you to be unsafe to accomplish a simple thing like make a phone call, or call your next client whose name you kind remember but not exactly?
I swear to God, I’m sick of living in “nanny world”.
If I can’t use my phone driving with a fully integrated hands free system then what’s the point of having a damn phone with me all the time? Honestly, maybe going back to land lines with answering machines wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
I guess having CarPlay installed in the car isn’t that much of a priority anymore. If it’s this broken why bother? Maybe I’ll disconnect from CarPlay and see if my system will allow just a bluetooth or wired connection to work properly.
Sounds like an interesting experiment for sometime this weekend.
Anyhow, the 4K charge was declined, and all the other charges were declined/reversed as well. I might be on the hook for $50 but thankfully that’s it.
The person I finally got to talk to after navigating the phone tree, entering zip code, account numbers and all the rest of the bullshit to verify I was indeed a person, was actually helpful. They closed the account then issued a new card which arrived FedEx the next day.
I still have no idea how that number got out into the wild. The card had been in my safe for over a year, and wasn’t being used for any recurring payments. In fact I hadn’t charged anything on the card for at least 18 months.
The situation was handled but really hacked me off.
I checked all the other accounts and found no unrecognized charges.
Today, I was notified that one of the credit reporting agencies had a breach of 4 million records Name, address, phone number, SS number, DOB, and literally everything else a credit reporting agency has access to, probably including account numbers.
Thrilling!
So be mindful out there, check those transactions, especially over this holiday weekend. I sincerely hope that the fuckers trying to take a luxury vacation on my dime get screwed or worse.
I’d personally like a few hours with them, in a good old fashioned S&M dungeon. Believe me, they’d not have a good time. I’d make Torquemada look like an amateur. At least when I was done, they wouldn’t contaminate the gene pool any further. Testicle paté anyone? I feel pretty much the same way about the call scammers too.
To get a feel for what I’m saying, watch the movie “The Beekeeper” No S&M but the protagonist burns a bunch of telephone scammers shit down. It’s very satisfying!
Starting with the credit card, an unexpectedly expensive car repair, and dealing with various aspects of the medical profession I need the long weekend. I’m not working, if I was also dealing with the stresses of a job, I’d be a complete nut case.
“I’m getting too old for this shit!” To quote Danny Glover in “Lethal Weapon”
I think I’m going to turn off the technology and take a techno-break for the next few days.
If you’re looking for a good binge show and you’ve got Amazon Prime, I can recommend “The Terminal List” everyone gets what’s coming to them, deservedly so. It’s another pretty darn satisfying series.
Time for me to pack it in.
Have a great long weekend.