My American Express card (member since 1990!) expires at the end of this month. A couple months ago (or so it seems; time’s a bit wonky these days), I got a notice that they would be sending my new card so I gave them my address in The Sandbox. Unfortunately, it didn’t arrive before I left, and I don’t think leaving five days early had any impact on that.
Although I put in a forwarding notice from The Sandbox to
Uh-mer-i-ka, it hadn’t arrived as of two weeks ago, so I changed my address
back to where it was and requested a new card. It’s arrived but I’m not there,
so the card is meeting me tomorrow. I have a backup credit card, so no worries,
right?
Well.
I have a morning flight tomorrow and in checking the metro schedules,
I discovered that they don’t start on the holidays until well after I need to
be at the airport. There’s a bus, but it leave a tad too late, plus it takes 45
minutes to go four miles.
No worries, right? There’s an app for that, or so I hear. I
discovered that Uber’s not great here, so I got Lyft and started setting up my
account. After putting in my backup credit card, I was all set. Or so I though.
When I hit “confirm,” Lyft informed me that I needed to set
another credit or debit card. Since my old AmEx wasn’t set to expire until the
end of the month, I tried that. No dice. I have the new card number, but I didn’t
have that secret code that they’re now adding to cards. My alternate card’s
website has a thing where I can see a PDF of my card, so I tried that. Nope, it’s
not there. AmEx has wonderful customer service, so I tried them. After finally
convincing the AI customer service voice that I needed a real person, the real
person said those numbers are secret and AmEx itself can’t see mine.
Any normal day, I’d love that safety measure, but not
today.
The Lyft app allowed for other types of payments, so I
thought, what the heck, I’ll just hook it up to my PayPal. It took about five
tries of endless spinning and restarting the app several times before I could
access PayPal, but finally had success. Relieved, I again went to make a reservation,
what since restarting the app killed the one I’d been trying to do. A payment
method and a backup, right? What could go wrong?
Well, it didn’t take. The Lyft gods took me to the “we need
another card” page. I tried again with the card, but it didn’t work. I
restarted Lyft again, changing my primary payment method to cash, thinking that
I’d have cash and a backup credit card. No dice.
At this point, I remembered I do have an AmEx card, even if
it’s not in my possession. Instead, it was being transported at that very
minute from Seminole Land to Disney Land. I called Zippy (she wasn’t driving)
and, after the usual Zippy-trying-to-hear rigamarole, convinced her to put me
on speaker so Barry, who acted as interpreter.
It was a long shot and didn’t pay off. All my mail – Zippy refuses
to shred anything, instead collecting it for to go through every year or so –
was in her suitcase. Since they’d been on the road for two hours already, I
asked her to text me once she got to Disney Land (two words, not the theme
park) and if I hadn’t solved the problem by then I’d get back with her.
There’s always a solution.
I searched for options and found a taxi company. The stupid
internet site wouldn’t let me order a cab from it – no idea what happened – but
I called the number. And it went straight to voice mail, except it said the
mailbox was full.
Seriously, how hard could this be, right?
After wrestling with whether or not to just have the hotel
call me a cab in the morning, I realized that I could just have them schedule
it tonight. I pulled on my .90 Target ghost slippers (post-Halloween find; my feet
were cold) and asked the front desk if they could do it for me. YES!
Oh my. The front desk associate (in training) managed to get
it done in less than four minutes. It’s funny how just standing there while
someone is accomplishing something that’s you’ve spent 20, 30 minutes on is
such a relief. It’s sort of like your frustration increases and decreases at the
same time.
But either way, I should have a cab to the airport tomorrow.
Happy Thanksgiving.
