Times When Life Doesn’t Compute

Computerized bookkeeping is swift and accurate, until an error creeps in--then it can become a nightmare.

Recently my wife applied for credit with a Midwestern mail-order house, only to receive a rejection form listing various delinquencies, none of which we were guilty of. Since she had done business with other mail-order houses for years, she was naturally shocked and embarrassed.

I phoned the credit agency only to be told, by an answering machine, that I would have to write a letter and ask for a copy of our report. There was no way to reach anyone in person. I wrote a righteous letter attesting to our solvency and our blameless record, knowing that the agency would not be moved by any protestations of financial rectitude. When the report came, we found that we had been charged with the repeated delinquencies of a woman whose name was similar to my wife’s and who had been assigned her social security number.

I’m pleased to say that we finally had the woman’s record disentangled from ours, and that the mail-order house has now been added to the numerous others with which my wife does business.

Orange attorney Marvin D. Mayer writes that his son took a year off from his graduate studies to work as a contract officer for the Navy in Washington. He wanted a vacation first in California, and bought a discount airline ticket for $250. Meanwhile, the Navy asked for a volunteer from his group for a one-day meeting with a contractor in Southern California. The Navy would, of course, pay for transportation. Since the trip coincided with his vacation, the young man volunteered.

He asked the Navy to reimburse him for his $250 ticket. The Navy said that was impossible. There was no official procedure for reimbursing him. They would have to buy another ticket for $950. Finally, the issue was resolved sensibly, and the Navy paid the $250, saving $700 for more crucial expenditures.

Mayer also reports that his wife, Judy, was to undergo bunion surgery, and her physician advised her to have some minor corrective plastic surgery at the same time, thus avoiding two trips to surgery and two anesthesias. She agreed, and notified her insurance company.

Later the hospital advised her that the insurer had approved the bunion surgery and one night in the hospital; however, the plastic surgery was considered an outpatient procedure, and she would have to leave the hospital immediately afterward. She naturally wondered how she could stay in the hospital one night and not stay in the hospital one night. Finally, the conflict was resolved. She had both surgeries and stayed in the hospital overnight.

“Perhaps,” Mayer reflects, “the fact that these two cases worked out satisfactorily is cause for some optimism.”

Several years ago, after one of the big earthquakes, my wife and I borrowed $2,500 from the government to pay for earthquake damage repairs to our house. About that time The Times published a story about widespread cheating by borrowers.

They were buying cars, refurnishing their houses, and taking vacations on the money. I went to the agency and said I wanted to pay our loan back. They laughed. They said no way. It would take an act of Congress. I threatened to petition my congressman. They found a way. We may be the only people who ever paid one of those loans back.

A more comical impasse is reported by Gene Gach, who encloses the following letter from a Newport Beach firm:

“You kindly placed an order with us on Wednesday, July 13th, for which your Visa was charged $0.00. Our monitoring equipment alerted us that this charge was duplicated, thus we wrote to you on July 20th advising that we reversed the duplicate charge on Thursday, July 21st. . . .

“I have now been advised that the transaction of July 13th was in fact not duplicated and that our reversal of July 20th was in error. Therefore we are reinstating the original charge of $0.00 which will appear on your Visa statement with the original transaction date of July 13, 1988.”

The letter assures Gach that the company’s computer program has been rewritten, so such an error will not occur again.

What Gach wants to know is whether he will have to pay any interest on the $0.00.