Hello everyone, sorry, I know you would all rather get a new chapter than yet again another update post but I can't help it, I just keep being thrown into annoying situations.
Do you all remember the letter I thought was a weird fishing attempt?
It turned out that it wasn't, I received a second one on the first of February and after I managed to successfully confirm its authenticity, I realised that I was indeed being victim of some kind of identity theft. I had to go to the police and call so many places it felt ridiculous, I finished the last call only last Friday (the 19th).
I don't know how much I can say even though I want to complain a lot. Someone used info he got from a massive leak at my bank to receive pandemic relief funds in my name. We're are thousands of victims of the exact same thing and no one seems to really care at all.
Everywhere I called the phone lines where jammed and we had hours of wait time, the people at the other end of the line always seemed bored and uncaring about yet again another one calling for the same thing. Some of them were outright unhelpful and asked me to do very stupid things other places told me not to right away when I told them about it and other people just had me call places in circles.
After 4h of waiting "You didn't call the right place, you have to call there instead." and then when I call that other place after 8h of waiting "We don't have anything to do with that, you should try calling there instead." and it just kept going.
I had to call five different places for the government alone and they all made me dance around each department like an idiot and the whole time, I was just sitting there wandering why they all had to be so bored and why they couldn't just transfer the information between their different departments on their own? Why the hell is the victim the one that has to call every single department to warn them about the unlawful use of my information? Can't they just share the folder between themselves?
The credit agencies were the same, one guy I got on the phone had a thick sloppy accent I could barely understand, it gave me impression he was eating peanut butter sandwich while talking to me. He asked me to write down a letter with what was happening with photocopies of identity pieces to confirm I am myself and mail it to their main office. Seriously, what the hell? I had to recall the next day to get someone else who did the necessary procedures by phone instead.
At least, I got two very helpful people at some point who helped me through the whole thing, I'll be ever so grateful towards them. In the pair of days I got them on the phone, I had more progress done than the other two weeks combined.
Now I got to watch out for the rest of my life because my social security number isn't a security at all but a liability instead.
Going back to writing, I had actually completely forgot about writing a new chapter while I was tangled in all this so that's why this update came a full five days after all the calls had been made and papers had been filled.
I'm still really tired, exhausted. At this point, it sounds like I'm making excuses to not write the next chapter and its already been around half a year since the last one but I honestly don't have the energy for it right now. I know that if I push myself I could write a new chapter but I'm afraid of what it would end up looking like. You'll all have to be more patient instead and I'll go back to sleep.