if i go away, you know why (part i)

so, here’s the deal…

…just so ya know.

as with so many components of my life, the plan was simple…

i got my invoice notice from fatcow (this sites hosting company) – $99 for one year, and it was gonna hit my account some saturday. problem is i wouldn’t have money in my account till tuesday, so i called to reschedule my billing cycle by a few days, as the email they sent me TOLD me to do if the thirteenth was a problem.

after half an hour of lame-ass hold music i had a real-life canadian on the phone, and he got it pushed no problem…but then i inquired about the $99, as it seemed higher than years past. he explained rates had gone up (shocker) but for my plan it broke down like this…

one year – $99
two years – $110
three years – $132

which would you choose? even though there was a slightly steeper step on that last one, to pay an extra $33 to be done with it till march of 2013 made sense to me (depending on which religious point of view you ascribe to this is technically three years beyong the end of the world, so i looked at as BEST case scenario i basically paying ’em for the last time ever).

he agreed to set that up for me and put me on hold…only to come back with some grave news. somehow in changing my billing cycle to the three year it erased him pushing it off a week and billed me NOW.

(NOW was in caps for emphasis, not to indicate the acronym for the “National Association of Women”, as i don’t see any feminist group, particularly that one, jumping on the bandwagon of paying for my site any time soon)

so my bank account went from $75 in the black to $65 in the red instantly. not good. while they have assured me the charges will be reversed without issue, here are a few options i see as how this could play out…

1. they reverse the charge, i call my bank, the site stays up, and i just pay them on wedneday of next week, no harm no foul, with the money going back in my account when my account cycles at midnight friday to saturday (i say these are about three to one against, going off my luck as of late)

2. they don’t reverse the charge overnight, i get overdraft fees, and then have to forward them banking statements to show it, be broke as fuck most of the weekend, and i get my $70 in overdrafts back via snail mail from the great white north in the form of a paper check sometime in the next thirty days (even odds on this)

3. they reverse the charge, i have to call the bank, yadda-yadda-yadda, money back some time this weekend, tons of cell minutes used, and then some automated thing on their end sees this as refusal to pay and they knock the site off-line, possibly causing me the archives (even odds again, and if all the archives disappear a second time this site might finally just be done)

4. some combination of all of the bad (and none of the good) from any of the three above resulting in negative bank balance, overdraft fees, the site offline, and me trying to figure out how to nuke canada. (two to one on everything on this number, higher odds against that last part as i don’t have a line on nuclear weapons…i know a guy, but his phone is going straight to voicemail)

you the gambling type? place your bets