MrBalky Heavy Industries

I have no status.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the credit card class action settlement? It revolves around the major credit card companies overcharging on exchange rates and service fees for transactions made overseas, including ATM withdrawals. Basically, if you had a transaction outside the U.S. between 1996 and 2006, you are entitled to a piece of the settlement. There are 3 options: a flat $25, 1% of an estimated total or 1-3% of individual yearly estimations.

Well, since we lived in Paris for 16 months, one can imagine we racked up the activity. For the entire time, I was paid by direct deposit to our U.S. bank, and we did everything with our cards.

So I’ll be itemizing, thank you very much.

Now the interesting thing about the whole deal is that the bank and credit card statements are kind of like a diary. By looking at the locations for the transactions, you can see when we went to Cologne for Mardi Gras, the trip Steph and I took to Positano and Capri, Christmas in Muenster, London, Bruges, the Camarque… all of it.

And at the end, I had to laugh out loud. After a final visit to Muenster in June, we got home on July 2. The first three visits were to an ATM, Conoco, and Liquor Mart.

Apparently our priorities are cash, gas and booze.

There’s been a mad account creation frenzy recently.

I have shiny new identities on reddit, flickr, stumbleupon, digg, and the most useful of all, Bar Diver. They’re still in the shrinkwrap.

Keep your hands and feet clear; they might get sucked into the whirling maelstrom.