Credit

2011 has begun in the sign of credit and crunches. As I zap through the news channels with a bile infested head the common thread seems to be the fact that there will be no let up to the effects of the credit crunch in this golden year. While the Con-Dem coalition is under fire for its decision to increase VAT to 20% in the UK, Malta’s opposition and its “social partners” are furious at the rise in prices of anything from petrol to milk. We will speak later about the honoraria debate but for now I’d like to share a conundrum about credit card fraud closer to home.

I was trying to review the damage on the various outlets of credit I possess when I noticed that on the 23rd and 24th December of last year some christian soul had availed himself of nigh €1400 in order to travel around the Philippines (hotel and air travel thank you very much). So I called CETELEM who are surrogates for the devil on this earth and informed them that the only archipelago I had visited at Christmas time was Malta. After a visit to every division in the CETELEM belgian offices I finally got some answers from the man in the fraud division. I would only have to sign some papers and the situation would be repristinated.

But. And there is always a but. I have to get a procés verbal from the police. That means I would have to go to a Luxembourg police station and declare that the data relating to my creditcard (and not the credit card) had been misappropriated. I would also have to tell them that I am doing this declaration in order to inconvenience some desk clerk at the office who would have to print out my declaration and authenticate it. Do you see? The police cannot do much about retrieving what has been stolen. The card is still sitting comfortaby in my wallet but the data has been virtually spirited and used elsewhere.

I would have thought the police would have better things to do and I will actually sympathise with any luxembourg policeman who will complain about the absolute waste of time in filling this form. CETELEM is actually inconveniencing myself (I’ve got to go to the station) and the police (they have to fill the form – or at least I hope they will). This is where I prefer the Maltese banks who send an SMS when you perform transactions with your VISA.

Bahh. C’est la vie. Time to have another antiflu pill or whatever.