The Tail Section

First things first.  There will be a Highway to Hawaii drawing this weekend.  In case you missed the memo, I will be on the island next week for four days.  During that time I will be posting a diary of my travel adventures here as well as on BuddyTV.com.   The BuddyTV coverage will no doubt be of the most interest since it will contain some ‘official’ scoops and possibly an interview, or two, or three, or maybe even, yes, five.  Who knows.

On the not so lighter side of things, let me tell you one thing right now.  Never, ever do business with Account Now prepaid Visa.  I decided to use them to book much of my travel because I’m credit poort (in case you didn’t surmise that by my neediness).  At first things were relatively okay.  I used the account to retrieve the fundraiser funds, which was allowed by their terms of use, but mostly I would buy these MoneyPaks.  You buy them at various stores, give the clerk the money you want on the card, come home, enter a code, and voila, you have money.

Well, I loaded the last grand of travel expenses onto a couple of Moneypaks, entered the codes, went to Walmart to purchase last minute stuff, luggage, a Hendrix shirt (in case I run into Naveen Andrews), and other essentials, got to the cash register and the card was denied.  Seeing as though I had put all my cash on the card, I couldn’t pick up my stuff.

Cut to the phone call.  So, remember that this is a "prepaid" card so there is no credit involved, I go home, call the company, and they tell me that the card has been flagged as potential fraud and that the deposits needed to be verified.   Wha?  Since when does cash need to be verified?  What are they going to do, call the federal reserve?  So I ask for the people behind this, the "risk" department, and the agent assures me that they will be contacting me.   I would like to point out that at no point did they call prior to closing the card to ask me about the suspicious money.

After 3 hours, I spoke to absolutely no one but mostly rude and occasionally sympathetic, but thoroughly powerless associates up until the company closed… for the WEEKEND!