Hot Wax Art & Crafts Blog

Today we got our money back from the bank after last week’s fraud incident.  Still no actual communication from the fraud dept, so we don’t know if it’s been a mix-up or actual fraud.  Hoping they’ll send us a letter soon to put our minds at ease.  Still haven’t got our new bank cards yet…

I was checking my bank balance online the other day when I noticed quite a big discrepancy between the running balance and available balance.  Thinking it was either a mix-up or some horrific bill I’d forgotten about, I waited until this morning to check again in the hope that my online banking statement would give me more details.

So, first thing this morning, I logged in again and found exactly the same discrepancy and no explanation of the cause.  So, I gave the bank a call and it turned out that someone has had a nice shopping spree at my expense – to the tune of over £400!

I can’t believe it – am absolutely devastated.  The bank has cancelled our cards (it’ll take 7-10 days before we get our new ones) and is “investigating the transaction”.  Apparently we’ll get a call from the Fraud Department in the next 3-4 working days and they’ll give us a timescale for getting it resolved.  We won’t see our money back until their investigation is complete, so we’re down £400+ for the foreseeable future.

What’s amazing me is that there doesn’t seem to be any fraudulent activity monitoring system in place for current account holders that would have flagged this up.  I can remember ordering a takeaway online once using a credit card – the transaction was declined and within minutes I had the CC company on the phone to check it wasn’t a fraudulent transaction!  When we confirmed that we did indeed want to order the takeaway, they released the block and we were able to order without any problem.  I’d have expected something like that with the current account as well – a £400+ clothes shopping spree (we were told it was women’s clothes) should have flagged up as being suspicious because it’s TOTALLY abnormal for our account.

So, now we just have to cross all of our fingers and toes and hope that we get our money back quickly!

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas & New Year!

I’ve got some exciting projects lined up which I’ll be blogging about shortly – stay tuned

Lots of snow here in Dunfermline at the moment – here are some photos to prove it

My youngest, about to disappear under the snow!

A tonemapped HDR photo of the street at sunset

I came across this quiz on the OU website today: Which Quite Interesting dead person are you? I am apparently most like Mexican artist Frida Khalo!

I submitted one of my paintings to Plaincraft and, as I type, it’s the top rated item!

Here’s the proof:

What gorgeous weather we’re having today!  We all slapped on the SPF 50 Sun Cream and went to the beach at Leven this morning, which was fab!

Long may the good weather last!

Yesterday I applied online to do an HNC in Art & Design at the local college!  The course covers drawings, paintings, communications, jewellery design, graphic design, pictorial illustration, ceramics and sculpture … and sounds FANTASTIC!!

I’ve been invited to go in for a chat about it next week, so fingers crossed!