Somebody Up There Is Laughing At Me

I'm not sure I believe in "Somebody Up There". But it's looking like somebody up there is trying to get my attention. And not in a good way, unless you possess a particular kind of humor. The mischievous kind.

This one goes way back. In the process of moving, I knew I didn't have room for all my prized collectibles. I knew, and it was confirmed, that many still had value, unlike, say, Beanie Babies. (I never understood that craze. Did you?) I selected some Chinese stuff to keep, along with a bunch of Native American pueblo pottery. An auction house inspected what remained and accepted most of it. The rest went away at several garage sales.

And yes, I'm still unpacking pottery. By now it's been so long that many of them are a delightful surprise to see ... again. I'm missing a stand for one large plate, but those can always be found somewhere. Pretty much everything is intact, so I'm happy with my packing efforts. I'm also happy to have shelf space for more than all of it despite having less total shelf space, period.

The auction house separated my treasures into several different auctions. Some results were exciting, some disappointing. The last one really stands out however, and begins this particular tale. It was held April 24, and had put such a high estimate on the single remaining piece that I was chomping at the bit to find out the results. Even though it came in at the low range of their estimate, it was a nice final check from them. Or was supposed to be.

If you've been following, you know about the mail issues we had. This part goes back before them. I'd been having my auction proceeds deposited directly into my credit union account. However, they'd merged with another credit union, and suddenly the ACH number was wrong. I was having to pay for the credit union to refuse the transfers, highly annoying in itself. But communications with the auction company were annoying as well. For this last check I decided to take the "safe" road and have a paper check mailed to me.

The first one never arrived. Emails were exchanged. Another check was sent. It too never arrived. More emails were exchanged. I finally got the mail situation straightened out, but only just recently. Remember, this goes back to an April 24th sale. With full assurances that the mail would finally reach me, now that other mail finally was (except for certain things which were requested much earlier and dropped in some black hole somewhere) I asked for this third try at sending their check.

It arrived in three days! Only! Three! Days!

I was getting paid for a few other things and waited a couple days for everything to be received and the holiday to pass before driving to the credit union, now about 35 miles from our home. I justified the mileage by doing some other shopping "in the neighborhood" (another 8 miles) at the same time. I endorsed everything, the clerk deposited everything, I left. Busy day, more stuff to do, and I was napping around 3 PM when I got a call from the credit union.

What the ???

She regretted to tell me that the check deposited from the auction company had been taken back out of my account. It seems nobody, not the auction company, not me, not the teller, had noticed that it hadn't been signed by the company!

After more than two months, thinking everything was done and we had no more dealings together, after I'd plunked the collected correspondence into my email trash, I needed to reach out and let them know we still weren't done with each other!!!

The credit union is holding their check in their vault, pending somebody's decision on what needs to be done with it. Mail it to me so I can mail it back to the auction company to sign and mail back to me again? Come in to the credit union, take a photo of the unsigned check for proof and see how they want to handle it this time? (Actually, if I had a smart phone I've heard those photos can be texted to the necessary recipient. However...)

One other thing I did while there was double check and get the new, proper ACH number now for anybody who needs to deal with  them for me, whether for a deposit or bill paying. I'm glad I did. It has a whole bunch more zeros and ones in it, and she printed out a full page for me with the number and other data. Since I have that, maybe we can go that route?

I dug through old dead emails and found the lengthy connected correspondence with the auction company, giving me the proper email address for the accounting team and the contact's name. I guess I'm lucky it hadn't been purged yet, but I haven't been that efficient for a long time. Very carefully I sent her another email. A bit tongue in cheek I started out suggesting she probably didn't think she'd be hearing from me again. After all my last contact was all praise for my finally getting their check. Yeehaaaa! I went on to explain some of the suggestions for dealing with the newest issue as offered by the credit union folks, an acknowledgement that she may well be on an extended holiday like a lot of the country also is, and my expectation of hearing from her as quickly as circumstances allow.

Now do you think somebody up there is laughing at me? No?

Well, after that email got sent off, I went and collected today's mail. It contained another check from somebody else I hadn't expected. I'm going to have to go to the credit union next week again anyway.

Do you believe me now?