checking in… Very short post..

True story: I've been trying to get on the Telus site to add airtime minutes to our phones. After the site wouldn't load up, I went out and bought the cards. I tried getting on their site using four different browsers. I finally gave up and called in. I gave them the PINs and the chick ends the call with, "and you can always check your balance at www.telusmobility.com" REALLY???????

Well we had some great news..

..for all of about 30 minutes!

We take the car in to get it fixed. We go home and then we get a call from the garage.. I didn’t answer the phone with “Hello” and I said, “I hope this is good news!” to which the guy said, “depends on how you define good news…” He tells me that the car is fixed. Then asks if I want the e-test done. It’s something we have to do in Ontario, if not Canada. It’s an emissions test. If it’s running good, you can get the plate sticker renewed. Well, it failed ONE thing. Turns out something on the list called NOX didn’t pass. NOX is nitrous oxide. Turns out my car is over the limit. How we need to pay another $129 (plus taxes!) to find out what the problem is. This is where it gets cute. This test will by me over the $450 to get a conditional pass. Meaning, I will have the plate sticker and be able to drive the car until we can get whatever it is fixed. I don’t remember what they said they THOUGHT was the problem, but new the part costs about $150-$300. But they did say they would be able to find a used part to replace it. If it’s not that part, it’s the spark plugs. Something that hasn’t been changed on the car in about 7 years. I’m thinking that’s the problem. I can hope and pray and wish it to be.

Oh yeah.. This all has to happen BEFORE September 16th. That’s when the tag expires.

Today, after we got the car back and I found out that we’re looking at MORE money, I started having these fantasies.. You know the type! Someone you know dies and you get some money. Or, my favorite that made me giggle, someone runs up to you and says, “OMG! I HAVE WAY TOO MUCH MONEY! HERE! TAKE ABOUT $3000!!” That $3000 is not something I came up with on my own. On the lot where we take the car in, they have another, NEWER version of my car. No price tag on it, but when I asked how much they wanted for it, Ken said something like, “another $3000.” I take it that’s with a trade in.

Also, I have started PRAYING! I never do that. The last time I prayed for something it had to do with my dad having cancer. I said, “God, I don’t want my dad to suffer like my mom did. If you’re going to take him, take him soon.” The next morning I get a call from the hospital that he was gone.

Also, I’m entering EVERY contest I can find for getting a new car.

Oh boy!

So I’m toying with this asshole from Nigeria about a ring. I told him I sent it, but it’s still here. These are the REAL emails I got. This guy seems to think I’m dumb..

First Email:

Hello..   
      Thanks for the mail...i was introduced to this site by a friend at work and i will like immediate purchase of this item  for my Niece 'Ilori' who is away of the state and been requesting for this item...i will offer you $330  including  the  shipping charges to her.. there because she is in need of it as a matter of urgency and due to my work i don't have time  to handle the shipping..i will want you to help me handle the shipping very well to her.. I will like to make the payment  via paypal ...Get back to me with your confirmed PayPal email address so that i can send  the payment..
Get back to me asap..

 

And soon I get this.. Like this is what PayPal looks like!

 

Henson (mailto:derekr1981@googlemail.com), Payment Notification®

Dear 

• Valuable Customer,
                You ought to have shipped the item to the destination by now, You can now forward the shipment proof (reference/tracking number and attached scanned receipt), so that we can credit your account.

We are very sorry for the inconveniences this may cause. 
Please bear with us, this new measure is taken to secure our client's interest against lost of item.  E..mail us the shipment details at this link verify_funds@officeemail.net and our customer service care will attend to you. As soon as you send us the shipment's tracking number to us for security purposes and the safety of the buyer and the seller,the money will be credited to your account.

Note: Please reply this mail immediately you receive it .Failure to respond to this mail may leads to Limitation of your PayPal Account .

Ilori Ayodeji
77, sapon road
Abeokuta,
Ogun state 
23437
110001
Nigeria

Address Status:  Confirmed  

Thank you for using PayPal ® We look forward to serving your online auction payment better in the future.

The PayPal Team.
PayPal Email ID PP301

  That email (verify_funds@officeemail.net ) doesn’t even work!  

Hi,
I will like to let you know that i have issue out the payment into your paypal account and am very sure you will be notify very soon, i will also like to let you know that it should be mail out through the Canada Post International Parcel Air Mail, Canada Post Service only simply because they are cheap.. So get the item mailed out as soon as possible... Let me trust you by shipping it out. Below is the address though it will be giving to you by PayPal but i just wish to give it to you again in order to avoid any mistake that may occur through the shipping process
Ilori Ayodeji
22, sapon road
Abeokuta,
Ogun state
23437
110001
Nigeria
I will be waiting for the tracking numbers as soon as possible......
Cheers.

Notice the addresses are DIFFERENT? The spoof one says 77 and the one they send me says 22. They also want a photocopy of the receipt I never got (since I didn’t mail it.)

I finally decided that I was growing tired of this shit and sent them an email:

I just wanted to find out what the right address is.. The one paypal sent me was different from the one you sent me.

You wrote:

Hi,

I will like to let you know that i have issue out the payment into your paypal account and am very sure you will be notify very soon, i will also like to let you know that it should be mail out through the Canada Post International Parcel Air Mail, Canada Post Service only simply because they are cheap.. So get the item mailed out as soon as possible... Let me trust you by shipping it out. Below is the address though it will be giving to you by PayPal but i just wish to give it to you again in order to avoid any mistake that may occur through the shipping process

Ilori Ayodeji
22, sapon road <--------
Abeokuta,
Ogun state
23437
110001
Nigeria

I will be waiting for the tracking numbers as soon as possible......
Cheers.

BUT! This is what Paypal sent me:

Ilori Ayodeji
77, sapon road <---------
Abeokuta,
Ogun state
23437
110001
Nigeria

Oh yeah.. the email address from PAYPAL doesn't work. So try again.. Actually don't! I still have the ring and you are a SCAMMER! I have enough proof because you have emailed me before. After you can't play with me anymore, you try it again. emailed me at myemail@XXXX and then you emailed me at czechm8@XXXX and then you tried it again with FeezalPhlox@XXXX. Please stop. You can't get me to send something to NIGERIA. Also, I have you blogged and reported. So, have a nice day.

I wasn’t expecting to get an email back.. but they did reply…

“You are a scammer also what are you doing with many emails......we are both SCAMMERS”

At least he admits it!

What kills me about this whole thing how they think no one will catch the spelling mistakes and other things in the “PayPal” emails.

Time to purge the old brain here..

I’ve been trying, for at least the last two hours, to get to sleep. Finally, I gave up and thought I would talk about anything that would be on my mind at this hour.
First thing: I’ve finally done it! No, I didn’t get the car fixed. It’s coming. I DID manage to come up with $500 to fix it. Just before I went to bed, I thought I might as well count the cash I have on me, then add it to what I have in the bank and then whatever I have left on PayPal. I found out that I had $500.. Actually it’s more like $503.34, and that’s without me counting all the pennies in the penny jar. I don’t have the wrappers for the pennies so to me they don’t exist. One of the last times I called the garage, I was told that for new parts it would be about $400 and if I wanted them on the car it would be $500. The last time I called they said I could come in on Friday and get it done. I’m sure the car will last that long, but I really hate having to wait that long. Also, about $43 just happens to be tied up in an account that I can’t get to, unless I walk into the bank and get it. It’s one of those pesky “you need two signatures” accounts and the nearest bank is in another town. If I had a lift there I could get the car done NOW! I’m not going to ask anyone for a lift until the garage tells me that they won’t let me bring the money after the car is fully functional.
What else is on my mind…… Oh yeah.. There’s a pipe in the bedroom/laundry room that needs fixing. I don’t know if it’s a water pipe or drain, but I think it’s a drain pipe. If you wash your hands in the bathroom, you find water in the bedroom. I’m really bummed out about this, but until the car is fixed, I’m ignoring it.
Anything else? Oh yeah! I was trying to sell a ring on Craigslist. I should just end it there since we all know what happens when you list something there. Here’s what happened: I list the ring and the next day I get an email asking if I still have it. I said yes. Then it was:
Hello..  
      Thanks for the mail...i was introduced to this site by a friend at work and i will like immediate purchase of this item for my Niece '' who is away of the state and been requesting for this item...i will offer you $330  including  the shipping charges to her.. there because she is in need of it as a matter of urgency and due to my work i don't have time to handle the shipping..i will want you to help me handle the shipping very well to her..Get back to me with your confirmed PayPal email address so that i can send  the payment..
Get back to me asap..
Well I told this person that if they were REALLY willing to pay me for a ring to ship somewhere, that I would invoice them from PayPal. for the next few days or so I didn’t hear anything. Then I emailed them saying I didn’t get a reply. This is what I got:
Me: I sent you the invoice to pay for the ring. Did you get it?
Henson Harol: Nop (not a typo on my part!)
Me: I sent you an invoice from paypal.
Henson Harol: resend it ... i did not see it...
Me: check your paypal account.
Henson Harol: hi let me the picture ones more be for i make the payment.... i got the invoice (the picture was on the ad!)
Me: (two days later) I haven't heard from you yet about the ring. Still interested?
Henson Harol: dont worry again
Me: I haven't heard from you about the ring in a while. Are you going to pay?
Henson Harol: don't worry......okay
So I finally decided to scrap the old ad and write a new one. Guess what happened!

Henson Harol: I will love to buy this item ...and i will like to know the best price
...what is the condition of the item?
This time I decided to try something new. I changed my email address to one of the meny I don’t use, and I changed my name to Zoe Flanigan. I said it was used and in great condition. Then this popped up in that account..
Henson Harol: Hello..
      Thanks for the mail...i was introduced to this site by a friend at
work and i will like immediate purchase of this item  for my Niece 'Ilori'
who is away of the state and been requesting for this item...i will offer
you $330  including  the  shipping charges to her.. there because she is in
need of it as a matter of urgency and due to my work i don't have time  to
handle the shipping..i will want you to help me handle the shipping very
well to her.. I will like to make the payment  via paypal ...Get back to me
with your confirmed PayPal email address so that i can send  the payment..
Get back to me asap
I went back to the account that started this in the first place and asked if they were going to pay and this is what I got as a reply:
Henson Harol: get the fuck off okay scamer
Me: You told me that you were sending me money. I sent you an invoice and I
never got anything from you. You try this with me again and I'll report you.
First to Gmail, then to AOL where you started this with and then to
INTERPOL.
I'm not a scammer.. See that? There's TWO m's in SCAMMER. You're the
scammer. Are you even in North America? I've run a trace on your IP address.
So you can fuck off yourself.
Henson Harol: you are a full  okay you can't full me
Me: I'm a full? OH!! I get it. you mean FOOL. I'm not a fool. This isn't the first time someone has tried to steal from me. You ask for my bank or PayPal info and then I send you the ring thinking it's in my account and it's not there.
At this point I was having way too much fun and I waited about 10 minutes and wrote this back to the idiot..
Me:
before you start telling me off again.. I traced your IP address..
Is this you?
IP Address
41.155.52.161
Country
NIGERIA
Region
LAGOS
City
LAGOS
Latitude
6.453
Longitude
3.396
IP Name
DIAL POOL SUBNET FOR LAGOS SUBSCRIBERS
Guess what, I haven’t heard shit from this person since.. Was it something I said??? *g* What kills me about people like this is that they turn it around and say you’re scamming them! This happened once before. I was selling a computer (look back on my blog. I wrote about it in depth) and when I told the person that they didn’t send me any money and I wasn’t sending them a computer (this person was ALSO from Nigeria) they told me about how they were going to report me to PayPal and I was going to get into trouble. How the hell can I get into trouble when they (PayPal) can see they didn’t send me money in the first place. I did tell them that I wasn’t scared of the big bad PayPal people, and soon they went away. So now I’m going to do something I never EVER do. I’m posting the email addresses this idiot used to TRY and scam me. If anyone out there should ever get an email in any variation of the following, DON’T TRUST THEM! Please let me know about it too. We can compare notes about what they said.

hensonharol02@gmail.com
hensonharol04@gmail.com
hensonharol@aol.com
Oh yeah… I did end up reporting them to a few people and even though I doubt they will be arrested, I’m sure they will pop up again somewhere else. I can only hope that bots find those addresses and spam the fuck out of them. Or someone else with time on their hands can sit there and bother them. That would be nice.

Yet another car update..

ok.. I’m going to shut the fuck up about the car now. The last time I said that they were quoting $400. Now it’s up to $500. I’ve managed to raise something like $450 for the car. Still need at least another $50 to $75. I’m leaving room for little parts like gaskets and screws that they might want to charge me for.

Is it new math or something? I was told the front pipe would be $180. I paid $80 two years ago for the flex pipe. That’s only $260. With HST it would be $293.80. Even with the hour to hour an a half, it would be $440. I’m not sure what else would be thrown onto the bill, but I’m hoping I can get it done soon. The fucking car sounds like a Harley. I love Harleys, I just don’t want the sound under the hood.

I wanna say something here that I said to a friend of mine this morning: I've saved up money, pawned all my jewelry and did some things in West  Quahog I'm not proud of, but I have almost all the money I need to get it fixed..

Yeah, I like Family Guy. And, NO! I didn’t pawn all my jewelry! The car won’t make it to Peterborough!

Please donate

in light of my car problems, I'll ask if anyone can kick me a few bucks.. not asking for for all it.

Update on the car..

Well, it turns out that when they said we were getting the exhaust from the manifold back, they might have been wrong. Turns out the flex pipe has broken off from the front exhaust. Right now we’re looking at about $400. We were there and heard the call to the parts place and heard that a front exhaust is $180. After we freaked about that (we also need another flex pipe) he told us he would check at the wreakers. If they have it, I might only have to pay about $200. I might be able to swing that, but I have bills that will not get paid.

This might be a long one…

Before I get to what’s on my mind I want to go back a few months to when this all started.  Hell, let’s go back to 5 years ago…

We moved to Norwood five years ago. Small town life was just the ticket for this city girl and I was happy wherever I was. We would live here, buy food here and usually from the source. We’re in Farm country and we support the local farms.

We were making a trip to Oshawa for a doctor appointment and we got as far as a little town called ROSENEATH. (Google it if you have to. It’s in Ontario.) We heard something hit the underbelly of the car. It was a loud one too. We tried to pull over and the steering was hard. We limped to the garage and found it closed. So I call CAA and they come get us and take us to the only garage we knew in Norwood. There’s three here, at least that’s what I’ve heard. We waited around for someone to look at the car and they said, “We will cannibalize parts from other cars to fix it. Shouldn’t cost too much.” Then we sat around waiting. Then we were driven home by one of the guys there. Seems lunch was coming and they would get around to it after they ate. When we got back, “won’t cost too much…” turned into a bill for $399! Well, we were out here about 6 months and he didn’t know us, but we paid the bill and I told him that I had bills that wouldn’t be paid because of this one. What broke on the car? The serpentine assembly snapped like a rubber band. There’s a drum that the belt goes on and that has a pin that screws into it. Both were stripped.

About once every 6 months or so, something goes wrong with the car. But these days it seems like more and more is going wrong. It’s a 99 Cavalier. I know for it’s age that I will have to shell out for some repairs, but since 2010 started, it’s been a battle trying to keep the car on the road.

In April we were heading to Oshawa for yet another visit to see a doctor. We got as far as Garden Hill (Google that one too.) when the muffler falls off the car. We get towed back to Norwood and after getting welding a piece of tailpipe and reattaching the muffler, we were back on the road. The car ran great for about a week. Then we were heading to Peterborough for dinner when the car started making a loud noise. We turned around and went back to the garage.

I wanna say something about the guys we go to. The owner is a guy by the name of Ken Maybee. I will plug his shop if he can get me deals. He sells cars there as a side job. I have no idea how old this man is, but he’s not young, damn near has a full head of dark hair and is a grandfather. I hope I look that good at his age. He works there with his sons, Mike and Dave, who I believe both of kids of their own.

Anyways, we get to the garage.. They take it out for a test drive, they check to make sure the weld from the week before has held. Then they let the car run while it’s on a lift. Ken calls us over and says he knows what was wrong with the car.

Now I want to give a little bit of a side note. When the muffler fell off the car we thought it was from a stress point from a little problem we had before. There’s a strap that holds the muffler to the underside of the car. It rusted off. Ken did something to fix it and I think there was a hook he added to keep the muffler from slipping off. During the short time this was going on, it caused a stress point and that’s what I thought the problem was. I found out later that I was wrong.. Here’s why…

Ken shows us where he fixed the tailpipe. Mike on the over hand showed us where the problem really was. The catalytic convertor DIED. I didn’t know it was an original part. Also didn’t know a man could put his bare hand on a tailpipe to show us where the problem was either. We had just paid $100 for the last repair and that was only a week before. We only had about $50 on us at this point. So Ken tells us to save up and come back. He said it might cost about $250 to fix. So I think I was able scrape together about $180 that week. Then I find out that what Ken decided to do to the car would actually cost $350. I made a call to a few people I know and I got the rest. Paid it back fast too. He took the exhaust from another Cavalier and welded it on to my car. From the manifold back, it was all replaced. Most of the money went to a new catalytic convertor.

I told you that story to tell you this one.

For the last two weeks or so, I was hearing a noise coming from the engine. It wasn’t all that loud and it would go away after the car warmed up. I thought nothing of it. Then it started up again and wouldn’t go away. If there’s nothing else people understand about me, it’s that I live with my head in the sand at every chance I get. If I don’t talk about it, it’s not real. Well… We went to Peterborough to the farmers market. We got all kinds of stuff! We were coming back when the noise started again and got louder. It sounds like a leak around the manifold. I’m hoping that’s all it is because I don’t have any money to spend on it. Did find out that if it’s the weld, they will redo it for free.

The last few days I haven’t been sleeping. The car is the reason why. I start thinking about stuff if I don’t have a book to read or a game to play. I play my DS in bed. I’m weird. I know it. When I get stressed I tend to clean. I have done the dishes at 3am more nights than I can count. It’s driving me NUTS!

I woke up this morning at about 4am. I did some dishes and started thinking.. Am I paranoid if I think that the guys from the garage come to my house and mess with my car when I’m asleep? I’ll talk to Dave about how we haven’t had any problems on the car and then that week something breaks. Maybe I’m just reading too much into it. At least I hope so. But I will say this.. Whenever we do bring the car in, Ken high fives us. That’s bad, right?

Car goes in on Tuesday. If all goes well, the car will be fixed and I can get some sleep. If not, I will be walking everywhere…

I guess I was right.. that was a long one!

It’s been TWO MONTHS…

..since I last went to an AA meeting. I gave up on them AGAIN. I found other ways to deal with my life. Not going to say much tonight. The hubby is down here in the living room and I’m growing tired. Just wanted to check in and say hi..

Actually, I will do this.. We had a wild storm here in Norwood. And I took pictures of the Christmas Tree that fell over during the storm..