I just installed Gallery 2 because frankly I’m sick of paying Flickr $25 a year when I can host my own images for free. For any friends or family that would like to have their pictures hosted just register at www.HalfZware.com/photos/ and start uploading! It may take a day because I have to verify each registration by hand. This is to cut down on spam. Feel free to check it out. I will slowly be switching everything over from flickr. Cheers!

Ok, so who the heck are these people? My wife received an automated phone call stating that we had some unpaid debt and they want us to call back so we can work things out. So she hangs up on them mid call as soon as they said who they were, and says “It’s someone saying we owe them money”. I’m wondering why the heck she hung up and she told me who and that it was probably a scam or something. Being credit concientious I want to know who the heck they are and how to call them back to figure out what the hell they want. I sure as hell don’t want my credit report to get screwed up over some bull shit unpaid bill, but at the same time is this a scam? So I typed in Allied Interstate into google and find some interesting results.

This one is claiming that Allied attempted to get $47 in an unpaid AOL bill. The man called AOL to confirm this and AOL stated he didn’t owe a thing. Allied Interstate also tried to get the mans Credit Card info and bank account number.

Unpaid AOL bill

Here is another link in which Allied Interstate calls a judge and claims he owes money and the judge takes matters into his own hands and does some research. According to the story, Allied buys old collections reports for pennies not knowing if they are paid up or not and then tries to get money out of people.
Judge gets information Beware of Allied Interstate

Also if you go to this next link it has the phone numbers of all the offices. I called the California office knowing that it would still be open becaues it is some 3 hours behind. I talked to a lady there and gave her false information just trying to get some information on the company and how it works. She didn’t tell me a whole lot but did bull shit me a little bit by saying the phone number I called her at was the only one on the web. And she wasn’t sure why the different offices don’t communicate with one another. Each office is designated to certain company collections. For example the California office is in charge of Wast Management, and the India office is in charge of AOL collections. She gave me the phone numbers of India (800-209-3949) and Consumer Affairs (800-811-4214). I called Both and didn’t get anywhere with AOL other than them saying they can’t say a whole lot and Consumer Affairs just left me on hold for about 25 minutes and when I called back after this they were closed. Anyway, I will be trying to call them back. If you follow the next link they are on an Agency Avoidance List.

Agencies To Avoid including Allied

Oh yeah, and if anyone gets one of these phone calls, before you give them your info check your credit report. You can get them for FREE now because of a nifty law the government passed a couple years back. Just go to www.AnnualCreditReport.com

I got a letter in the mail from my bank today discussion the terms of what they called “Provisional Crediting” to my account. In a nutshell they note that they have credited my account and I get to keep the money for the time being, until the investigation is over, I get full use of the funds. They will notify me during this time and notify us of the outcome of the investigation and let us know if we get to keep the money or not. Katy and I still have not heard back from the detective, and at this point don’t expect too. Either our case isn’t that important or he is extremely busy. As for ebay, I don’t believe they can track any stolen PS3’s. Besides if they could I would need the police report, which I need the detective for. Oh well, my want to put forth energy in this case is dwindling. It seems like I can’t get any help from the cops, and in order to furth any sort of investigation I need them.

So apparently after reviewing the tapes at my wifes work again, it appears that two black males came in and one of the males distracted one of my wifes co-workers while the other male went into the stockroom, and stole my wifes wallet out of her purse. After the other black male came out of the backroom, they just walked out of the store and went to Wal-Mart. The cameras can only be viewed so far towards the back of the store, and there are no cameras in the stockroom. The men wore hats and such so you can’t really see their faces at all on the camera recordings. I’m still trying to figure out if a co-worker was partially in on this or not.

I tired to call the detective today and left another message and he hasn’t called back yet. I also called Sony they told me that they can’t track the PS3s online, but if someone tried to send one of the PS3s in for repair then Sony could notify the police. I need to fax a police report with the serial numbers in the report. I also called some local pawn shops and I also need a report to file anything with them. Looks like I have to badger Goshen PD in order to do anything. Maybe I can go in tomorrow on my day off and get a copy of the report. I guess we will see.

While I was at work today I called Detective Mackowiak from Goshen PD, and reiterated what had happened since he forgot who I was since last talking with him less than 24 hours before. He must be a busy man since he was taking another report from another incident. He let me know he was busy and that he would call me back. I waited and never heard from him. I also called The Bank today and told them that our account was supposed to be taken care of and that I was still in the hole and need to pay bills. My banker then called me back and told me that I should have it taken care of by tomorrow morning. I just checked my account and all seems well, I am in the positive numbers again, but can not view some pending transactions because of routine maintence that happens every night. After calling The Bank I talked to the accounting office at Wal-Mart and they said that I could get copies of the receipts if I came in. They said they would let a manager know that I was coming in since they would be leaving at 2pm which is before I get off of work. After work I hauled my butt on into Wal-Mart with Katy, so that I could copies of the receipts that I had requested. The manager couldn’t give me copies of the transactions but gave me enough info to make me happy.

Two black men went back to electronics and purchased a giftcard for $800 using my wife’s bank card. The men came back shortly after to the same cashier (#1) and decided they wanted to purchase two Playstation 3’s (The 60GB model) and used the giftcard ($800) and charged the rest on our bank card. After getting away with this the men decided that they wanted to reload the same card with another $400. Apparently there was another cashier involved in this transaction (Cashier #2), she thought this was suspicious and asked for the card and ID, and the men took off. The card was reloaded with $400 but the cashier must of realized this before giving the card back to the men. Wal-mart then realized they had screwed up and allegedly credited back my card.

Now mind you, the manager on duty would not let me see any of the transactions. When asked about the second cashiers name she said she had to go look it up. She then went into the office for some time and came out and gave me her name and seemed to look around for her and say that she was there. After coming home I realized that the three transactions were done minutes apart (7:38, 7:39, and 7:40), so how could another cashier come into play? Is the manager giving me false information to cover her butt and the other cashier? Any why wouldn’t she give me the receipts even though I was told I would be able to have them? To me it looks like Wal-Mart is covering their butts because they fucked up. I will find out some more information tomorrow. I really want to get to the bottom of this. Also I have the serial numbers for the PS3’s

STOLEN 60GB PS3 SERIAL NUMBERS
CE129625474
CE126274521

Ever have this happen to you? Ever worry about this happening to you? I have, which is why it pisses me off when I’m at a store and the cashier doesn’t check my ID when I swipe my credit card. And now they have this new fangled thing called TapIt, where all you have to do is tap your card to this pad which invokes a transmitter to pull data off of an RFID in your card. I don’t even want to go into the vulnerabilities of this right now. But I will let you know that most credit card companies and banks are requiring their users to switch to this type of card. Also as of this year RFID tags will be put into all new passports that are issued by the US government. Anyway, last Saturday, January 6 someone stole my wifes Debit Card, which was issue by my Bank and backed by Mastercard, and charged almost $2000 at Wal-Mart. To be more exact there were three charges:
1) 7:38pm $800
2) 7:39pm $512.56
3) 7:40pm $400
The sick thing about this whole thing is that my wifes wallet was taken by a co-worker while my wife was working. Someone went into the break room opened up her locker and grabbed my wifes wallet out of her purse, leaving her purse on the break room table. There were three people working that night that are possible suspects. Currently the case is being looked over by Goshen Police department. Both of our cards are inactivated and our account is unusable. Our bank is supposed to be giving us a “Provisional Credit” but we have not received anything yet and it’s almost Thursday. Our account now is over $1000 in the hole and we need to pay bills. Katy called Goshen PD today and left a message for the detective that is looking over our case, and he hasn’t called us back. We still have to get him to go to Wal-Mart to get the tapes so we can view them. Anyway, Katy and I are pretty pissed about this whole thing. I’m going to find the inconsiderate ass-hat that did this.