Beware of scammers: a true story of Suzanna Chan, Windermere 1995

A story surfaced this week about more scammers claiming victims on Facebook.

Well, sooner or later, anyone would fall victim to such predators.

I am not one who shys away from speaking my mind and the truth about things I've witnessed, so...

This brings me to a true story of my experience with Suzanna Chan a dozen years ago.

Yes, there are many "Suzanna Chans" out there, so I will clarify by saying this is the one who graduated from Windermere Secondary in East Vancouver back in 1995.

A year after graduation, Suzanna, who knew I was interested in her friend Vicky Lam, approached me to "help" her out.

Young and naive at the time, why would I suspect anything was fishy? I mean, people at that age trusted each other--okay, I guess I was really naive.

Suzanna claimed that she didn't have enough Internet usage time with her university unix email account--because there was supposed to be a maximum 10 hours allowed for home usage with those email accounts--so, she wanted to know if she could use my account instead. You know, double her access time.

She added that she wanted to correspond with some guys via email too, and didn't want to use her own name and account. (And she showed me those emails too--some guy actually sent her a $10 Amazon gift voucher.)

There was some verbal agreement that she would help set me up with her friend, so I thought, hey, why not?

After all, I did not use my university email account that much, and not really thinking about it, agreed.

The other kicker was that Suzanna knew that a friend of mine was interested in her buddy Ann Kwan, and so this way, could perhaps try to test him using my identity.

But, to make a long story short, Suzanna then later borrowed $700 from me, claiming that she had lost some money from bad investments and didn't want her family to know. Even though she came from a well-off family and had lots of other friends, she picked on me--again, fishy but I didn't really catch on to it.

Don't tell anyone, was what she told me. (Anytime someone says that, run.)

And she made comments like she didn't want to be seen with me in public, and she mis-pronounced my name on purpose, every chance she got. (Much like the alleged stories of how Steinbrenner referred to Showalter as "Bucky.")

Next thing you knew, by the due date, she avoided contact with me. When I called her house, there was one time I remembered she hung up on me and other times her little sister or other family members said she wasn't around.

I finally did manage to track her down and told her off, but the damage was done.

It was a while later, when I got a phone call from campus RCMP.

The constable got me in there and accused me of sending harrassing emails--and I immediately suspected who was behind it. I had no proof, but I named both Suzanna and her friend, and told the constable that I had given out my password info to SC, who might have given it to her buddy.

The other thing was, a little time later, I suddenly got blacklisted from Allan Chee and his gang--the group of guys that I had participated in in an online simulation league called the BCHL.

I remember reading a blurb on the Internet about three years ago, about some girl and guy with the same names (ie. SC and AC) living together at an East Van address.

That made some sense to me.

Anyway, I have not contacted any of those people for over 10 years now, and I have no proof who sent out the emails using my account. That part of the story is pure speculation.

But one thing for sure was, I was royally duped by Suzanna Chan. Again, I was young and naive, but it just goes to show, anyone could be tricked.

12 years after the fact, I am not accusing anyone here because I have no evidence. However, again, the truth of the matter was, I was tricked on two occasions, so that's what I am emphasizing here.

Anyone could be scammed.

Hope that it won't be you readers out there.

Have a good day.

Big companies stealing money from people

So, even the big companies are stealing from little folk like me. And, a famous pizzaria is treating customers like crap.

First things first, the big company in question is a well-known telephone service provider. Its name starts with the letter "T", and let's just say the name rhymes with "Phyllis."

So, I was behind in payment for this phone company on my residential line, and made a lumpsum payment of $158 on March 17 by Internet banking.

Only my next bill came--dated some 12 days later--saying I still owed that money.

I immediately called the company to verify the balance. Yup, that payment was not received. And since it was already nighttime, there were no live representatives to help me with this.

I double checked on the bank account and realized that I had erroneously sent the payment to the WRONG phone account. I had sent the payment to my inactive mobility account, which had been closed for a couple years.

So, the next morning, I called up the company and asked them to transfer the $158 from the inactive mobility account to the normal residential account. Yes, it was my fault, my error, but you would think in this day and age with fast transfer of accounts and such, this was not hard to fix.

Only the customer service rep told me he couldn't fix this, and had to transfer me to the Mobility department.

I explained my problem to the rep there, and she put me on hold for 10 minutes--ensuring I would be late for work (since I made the phone call at home).

(And when I was on hold, I was thinking that since the head teacher is consistently late himself, I wasn't too stressed out about the fact that I was going to be late. So there...he can't possibly say anything to me otherwise it would be hypocritical.)

So, 10 minutes later, the CSR came back and said they NEVER received the payment!! She claimed that I would have to call up my bank and do a "stop payment" because they (the phone company) "never received it."

Of course, very easy to verify - I called up the bank and was told that T---lus DID receive the payment, and it might have gone into their general account--ie. the lost account where misguided funds go to--and would send in a request on my behalf to get that refunded back.

So, basically, this phone service provider was ready to just STEAL my money and shrug it off like they didn't receive it. If I didn't check my own records--and waste a lot of time in the process by following up and being on hold, etc.--I would have been duped.

So, thanks for nothing, "Phyllis."

Anyway, never did I, at any point during this phone conversations, lose my temper or yell at anyone. If I weren't a mild-mannered person, I probably would have lashed out.

But on the same day, I went to this pizza place for lunch. Let's call it "D's" Pizza. It is, after all, a big American franchise.

Now, I don't know first hand if the cashier was having a bad day, or she simply hated her job, but she never at any point crack a smile to greet or talk to me.

When I asked her a question about toppings, she was NOT friendly and her tone/attitude was like I was asking a dumb question.

No sign or respect at all.

And when I gave her the debit card to pay for the order, she swiped it and put the card down, and didn't even bother to pass the debit pin device (whatever it's called) to me.

So I stood there for a couple seconds thinking it wasn't processed yet and waiting for her to hand it to me, only to realize she wasn't going to do it. I guess too big of her to do something simple.

Okay, again, if I weren't an easy-going person, she would have gotten an earful.

So, once again, these types of incidents have proven to me that these big corporations/companies are faceless, gutless outfits that just care about your money and don't bother to provide good service.

Well, if we're going to play this game, next time, if I go back to that pizza place, she ain't getting my card. She's going to get a handful of pennies thrown down on the counter--the kind of respect that she deserves.

This week's posts- April '08

Posts this week on BR:
1) Red Sox lose third straight at Rogers Centre- 04/06/08
2) Red Sox lose thanks to Snyder... - 04/05/08
3) Bruins-Habs AGAIN- 04/05/08
4) Henrik to Daniel..score?- 04/04/08
5) Anderson (Panthers) kills Hurricanes- 04/04/08
6) Leafs-Sens preview- 04/03/08

All can be found on http://bleacherreport.com/users/2135-KP_Wee or just click on the "Favourite Links" on the left.