Imagine one morning you wake up, head out to your local coffee house and use your debit or credit card. Only to find out that you are not yourself anymore. Doesn’t make sense, right? Not right now at least.

Maybe you’ve spent a little too much time on social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, and all the others out there. Be careful with giving out your name and address to anyone, just because they require it for you to sign up doesn’t mean you should. Networking website such as the ones listed above are becoming the ultimate platform for creating brand awareness. It’s critical that you get some sort of identity theft protection, this day and age before anyone else claims it.

People work hard each day to try and making a living to support themselves and their families. It’s devastating when financial fraud has happened. It can happen by money laundering, an organized crime by stealing PIN numbers from ATM machines, or even while you use your debit card at a place such as McDonalds — hey don’t laugh, it’s happened to one of our clients here at the financial institution I work at. McDonalds people. These folks are getting bold with setting up whatever gadgets they may have, so they can rob people. It’s sick.

How can you protect yourself? I advise people to start using credit cards on a regular basis, that is — if you’re diligent with them and paying them off even before they’re due. Often if you pay with something with cash, debit or cheque it cannot be reimbursed to you if something doesn’t turn up that you ordered. Visa and MasterCard have a protection plan against that. Minimize the risk. You have to be careful about sharing your personal information online or letting it circulate freely about on the interwebs. If you’re asked to provide your information — don’t be afraid to ASK why it is needed and how it will be kept safe. Do not ever give out your SIN (Social Insurance Number) out to anyone but potential employers, and do not ever carry your SIN card (or Birth Certificate) in your wallet.

Pay attention to your billing cycle – say your credit card or other bills fail to arrive to  your home. You need to contact the company to ensure that it hasn’t been illicitly related. Further more, choose difficult passwords, memorize them and chance them often. Do not write them down and to make them more difficult use a combination of letters and numbers.

Remember the honest review and opinion I wrote of The Waters Spa, in Waterloo Ontario back on October 21, 2009? Here, you can find the “the water spa: disaster” review before you continue on with this post. Reading the linked blog post above, you know I had a decent time at the spa, however there was a few mishaps on both my part and The Waters Spa in Waterloo.

As I mentioned in my previous post three months ago, I found a shocking charge on my MasterCard from The Water’s Spa — double the amount what I thought I was supposed to pay for a visit to the spa. I phoned the manager and politely brought it to their attention in an attempt to resolve things. To make a long story short, they did nothing to correct the matter and simply suggested that I purchase a less expensive package on my next visit. Poor customer service on their part, in my opinion — as if I’d go back there again after much frustration dealing with them and my credit card company for a complete waste of my half an afternoon.

What bothered me the most, so much so that I had to create a brand new blog post about The Waters Spa, was they didn’t notice my review (which has both positive, and negative things to say about the spa) until it reached to be the 3rd link when you googled “The Waters Spa”. My review of the Waters Spa was clearly popular with people wanting to find reviews of this place before attending – as they should. However, I don’t think it’s right to ask people to remove any sort of review, whether it be negative or positive. People deserve to know and not shun negativity and think everything is fine and dandy. We both made mistakes, and I just happen to post it on a personal website of mine. Isn’t that what reviews are all about? To notify people of how the spa treats customers? I mentioned in my post we were treated like royalty. I was just appauled at the incredible price of a visit to The Waters Spa, and didn’t come to a resolution.

The owner of The Waters Spa contacted me directly, unknowingly to her that I was the personal owner, and operator of this website. The first of two e-mails she sent me was pretty bold on her part. Let me screen shot it and paste it below for you, so you can personally see what she had written.

Please, go ahead and click to enlarge the image so you can read what she had written.

Not so professional, right? If she had read it clearly herself, she would have known I did have my facts straight. I am not a dishonest person, and I would have never even thought about writing a review on The Waters Spa, unless I was treated wrong.

10 minutes later another e-mail came through to my inbox, with her apologizing.

You can also click to enlarge this e-mail too!

I was pretty annoyed that the owner of The Waters Spa wanted me to take down a post on my own personal website, about my time spent at The Waters in Waterloo, as I said nothing to ruin their reputation at the spa, and I certainly wasn’t “being nasty”, as I quote her e-mail. An honest review of the spa I went to. That was all.

I gave myself a few days to respond to her and I finally wrote her back on January 7 replying this. Also a screen shot, feel free to enlarge it so you can read it better.

I blurred out my last name for obvious reasons.

There has been no response yet for over a week. Which is why I decided to share my story as to what happened. I believe that I have done nothing wrong but stat facts as to what has happened to me. I am not bashing The Waters Spa, but rather alerting people to be aware of the prices — which have conveniently changed on their website after the mishap in October.

This blog post has been cross-posted on my other blog here.

Funny. I had a dream about climbing last night for the first time in a really long time. Maybe it was because I went climbing over the holidays, or a reminder to re-watch the Bouldering In Newfoundland film I was in. Either way, it got me thinking, maybe I needed to subconsciously start Climbing the Mountain so to speak. Maybe not go as far as all holiness and stuff, but start bettering myself. Getting Alfie was a great way to perk things up in my life. I live a great life, but sometimes I just found it really boring, since I wasn’t allowed to do what I loved on the weekends: Soccer.

I was in a rut.