Restrictions ON!

There I was, just minding my own business this morning, finishing up some e-mails, scheduling some appointments, your basic TCB-ing (taking care of business), when in popped an e-mail from STM. "HOW did we spend $1,100 on iTunes this month?" He was going through the alarmingly high Visa bill and was not liking what he saw (even more than usual).

Ever since I fell in love with Pandora, my iTunes downloads have gone to zero, and the only other person with access to my iTunes account is Wil. I put all the information on his iPad when we got it so I could load it with appropriate apps, and until this very recently, it has not been a problem. I gave him the don't-buy-any-apps-without-my-approval lecture, and for well over a year, he didn't. But, apparently the lure of Coin Runners was just too much for him.

I contacted the iTunes Store immediately, and was placed with an angel named Nadine. If you have phone phobia, then Apple will work well for you - there was not even a possibility of speaking live to a  person from the iTunes Store, and at one point I even said, "Could you just call me?" It was at that point where Nadine requested the order number of each and every order for which I wanted to be refunded. Let me tell you, dear readers, there were one hundred. I counted. I still don't get it, but there was no cutting and pasting option, and even if there had been, each "page" of orders, 10 orders to a page, 10 pages, had only 8 of the 10 digits on them, I had to click each of them (let me remind you, there were a hundred) to get the last 2 digits. Of. Each. I then laboriously wrote each one down, eventually coming up with a system, because Henry Ford ain't got nothin' on me when it comes to assembly work. As pathetic as this sounds, I was sort of born for this tedious, laborious, repetitive, mindless work.

After coming up with my handwritten list of 100 order numbers (all from March to April), I typed them all up and had to attach them in an e-mail. Apparently that impressed the powers that be at Apple because I was informed within 30 minutes that I would not only recover the $1,100 I originally went after, but a grand total of $1,608.38! ($500 in charges hadn't hit the Visa yet.) That is a helluva lotta Coin Runner! I think he would order it, load it, play, delete and repeat. Sometimes multiple times a day. And yes, I did play the special needs card, but it didn't take too much arm twisting to "win" my case.

It took most of the day, but when have I ever "made" $1,608 for a day's work before? And yes, I have applied restrictions left and right and deleted the credit card on file.