Fraundulent activity?

My dear friend Jenn is fundraising for the heart foundation and being a sucker for a good cause I decided to pledge a small donation. Thinking nothing of it I accessed the secure site via the link provided by Jenn and proceded to enter my Mastercard details. When the site refused to process these details I entered my Visa debit details, which were again refused. I tried for the next 10 minutes or so inputting my details, yet each time they were declined. Reaching the conclusion that the site wouldn't take my deatils due to my being in the UK I decided I'd have to think of another way to donate.

Last Saturday I tried to make a card payment in a clothing shop and both my mastercard and Visa debit were declined (I'm skint, but not that skint!). As it was literally seconds before closing time I came to the conclusion that the machine was having problems and the delightful Mr M stepped in to pay with cash.

Monday Morning the post lady arrived and low and behold she was bearing two letters from my bank. Both detailing that suspect activity had been detected on my accounts and therefore they had both been suspended until all activity was verified and Fraud was ruled out. WTF???

So, me talking to a call centre in India (yes, they direct most of our business calls this way as the costs are so much cheaper - it doesn't matter that often you are not understood or that you can't understand the person on the other end of the phone!!) trying to explain that I had in fact made 13 separate donations to a charity in the united states - I felt obliged to tell the lady all about my friend Jenn, baby Sam and the importance of this fundraising.

The moral of the tale - if at first you don't succeed give it up as a bad job and send a cheque!

I'm just hoping that the donations have been processed and very thankful it was just $1 each time - it could have been so much worse!