By Nikita Oliver
I am writing to request a refund for the $62.48 that you have taken from my account in $6 increments over the past 10 months. I did not consent to this.
I noticed the first transaction around June last year while reassessing my budget, or lack thereof. I’d been experiencing somewhat of a quarter-life crisis (I’d broken up with my long-term boyfriend) and I was dealing with it by dabbling in a little bit of retail therapy (buying anything that I thought might make me cry less).
I’d been spending too much money and it was time to be a Big Girl and cut down on my expenses. I logged on to CommBank for the first time ever and scrolled through the previous month’s spendings.
Rent? A necessary expense. A subscription to an online service promising to help me “unleash my own magic”? Perhaps I could live without it (wait for Issue 3 of Glass to see if I ever really did unleash my magic). “Month-to-Month Ut Usa Card”? Another subscription. But what for?
I decided that I would wait for a confirmation email to come through to see what this subscription was for. No email came through. Several months passed.
It is now February of 2019 and I have spent half a year watching the US dollar become more valuable as this unknown “business” charges me 4.44 USD, plus an international transaction fee, every four weeks.
I finally decide to give the business name a google. No specific business comes up, but most of the results include “travel card” and “Utah”. Fucking Utah, the most inconspicuous of all the United States. Nice try.
The thing is I’ve never been anywhere close to Salt Lake City. I’ve never even been to America. I’ve never actually left the country. So why would I be signed up for a US travel card? The answer is I AM NOT and a man in Utah is SCAMMING ME.
You’ve done this for ten months now. You must be getting pretty cocky. You must think you’re safe, that if I haven’t done anything by now, I never will.
Look, maybe.
The truth is I haven’t been too stressed about this because I know I’ll get my money back. I once lost my card in a nightclub in North Queensland and found out the next day that someone had picked it up and spent hundreds of dollars getting rounds. I cried on the phone to my bank and they got me every penny back. What I’m trying to say here is that The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has got my ass and we’re coming for you next.
All the best with your future fraud endeavors,
Nikita Oliver
P.S. I openly admit that I cannot confirm that you are indeed a man and I’m sorry to stereotype, I just don’t believe that one of my sisters could treat me this way.
An open letter to my bank
Hey Commonwealth,
I really hope you read the above letter because I’m probably going to forget to call you. I hope you really do have my ass, I need that 60 bucks for a textbook.
Sorry I’m not good at keeping my details safe,
Nikita Oliver
Member ID xxx xxxx xxx [redacted for writer’s safety]
