Fa, la, la, la, la and all that rot! Not only is it the season of the year when suicides and homicides are at their higest level than any other time of the year, it will soon be the time when fraud runs rampant. People who work in credit departments will tell you that the week before Christmas including Christmas Eve are the worst times of the year for fraud.
For several years in the 1960's and 1970's I was employed by the Amoco Oil Company in its central credit card operation in downtown Chicago. My grandfather had helped me get this job; his immediate supervisor was the superintendent at Whiting Refinery, and by virtue of that position also an Amoco/Standard Oil Vice President of refinery operations. That same man had 'gotten me on' at University of Chicago as a telephone operator when I was a junior in high school.
Most of that time was spent in the Sales Authorization Department, which is another name for the part of the credit department which approves (or not) credit card sales 'at the point of purchase'. In those days, 35-40 years ago, originally there were no computers to help us; -- there were the large mainframes in our 'computer department' but no desktop individual computers; they did not exist -- then we eventually got computers but approvals or declines were given by voice authorization. Of necessity, because of the huge volume of calls received (typically several hundred calls per hour, distributed to all clerks in that department via an ACD (or Automatic Call Distributor) there were 'floor limits' in effect for the various merchants. As an audit trail regards who said what, 'approval codes' were recited over the telephone in this way, "okay (code number)" and the merchant wrote down this number on the paper charge ticket which served as his proof that he _did_ call it in and get it approved. For example, "OK 67H3CPT" meant that some clerk named 'PT' had okayed transaction '67H3C' on that day.
Prior to any computers at all -- except the mainframes -- (early to mid-1960's) we worked from large bound volumes of books -- computer 'print outs' of about a thousand pages each with thirty or forty entries; 30-40 entries per page, a thousand pages per book, about 40 books in total on shelves. As we walked around the room wearing telephone operator-style headsets with very long cords on them, we would go to the account number desired (the books were arranged in numerical order, after a bit of experience you knew that a given account would be found in volume 37, and approximatly what page it was on therein) so you would walk over there, flip open the book, examine other penciled in entries [amounts of previous sales since the book was last updated], the 'credit limit' and any other notes handwritten there by your co-workers. That gave you a rough idea of what the customer's current balance [including any pencilled in entries] was, and what it would be if the sale in question was approved. Thirty or forty clerks, on their feet all day, all climbing over and around each other to check books and note balances, etc. Needless to say, excellent body hygiene was important, but not always observed. Suffice to say, we by and large 'trusted' the customers to not go over their credit limit; those were simpler times and simpler customers, not as sophisicated in fraud as many are today. When a customer did go over his limit, or was delinquent, then of course you did not approve the sale, and told him why if you were asked.
Merchants had varying 'floor limits' also. For most merchants, some minimum dollar amount did not have to be called in; jewelry stores had to call in _all_ sales; gasoline stations did not have to call in anything under ten dollars or so. It really depended on the commodity being sold. Merchants got a mimeographed 'hot sheet' from our office on a weekly basis; they always had to check this 'hot sheet' prior to any sale, as this told them what cards were always invalid at all times; customers who had gone way over limit with small sales under the floor limits; instances of fraud, etc. The only time this did not apply was when our phone lines got so backed up with calls waiting, then the department supervisor would announce 'floor limit is raised to X dollars' and that was understood to mean we did not have to check the print outs for anything under that dollar amount; just pronounce an approval code based on a 'manual' formula.
Then one day we all got personal desktop terminals, and the printout books were gone. Now just sit there and type in the account number given and the computer would respond automatically: If the account was good, 'OK (code)' or if the account was bad: 'Declined'. If the computer could not reach a decision on its own, then the response would be 'review' and the customer's history for the past 5-6 months put on display. For those accounts marked 'review' then we who worked there had to look at the display and reach a decision and give the approval code or the decline. It made our work much easier. At the same time, changes in the floor limits due to phone line congestion became less necessary. But there was no such thing as in later years where cards were 'swiped' or automatically entered by the cash register, etc. For the merchants it was still a totally manual operation. For us in the office however, no more needing to try and decipher someone else's illegible scribbles in the margin of the print outs, no more climbing over or around a co-worker to find a volume of account numbers in a missing print out book. This would have been about 1968 I think when we each got a desktop terminal.
And it was 1967-68 when Amoco inherited Diner's Club temporarily. Diners had always been located in New York City, on Columbus Circle. Founded by Alfred Bloomingdale, in the late 1940's and early 1950's, Diners Club was _originally_ the credit department of Bloomingdale's store in New York City. About 1952 or so, Bloomingdale's decided to 'spin off' Diners Club into its own thing. (Recall for example how the Southern Pacific Railroad decided to 'spin off' its telecommunications department into a new entity 'Sprint'.) The very same thing happened with Bloomingdale's Department Store and its new entity Diners Club. Alfred Bloomingdale owned the department store of the same name and he also owned Diners Club. Like Amoco, Diners was also completely a manual operation for the first several years, but unlike Amoco, Diner's ran into some severe problems, both in their billing practices and their merchant payment practices. It got to be so bad for Diners that they were losing many merchants and many customers. About 1965, Diner's sent a letter to all merchants saying they were sorry for being so screwed up and they were going to try harder. By 1967-68, the VietNam era of anti-everything Diner's Club and Amoco Credit Card Center had at least one thing in common; they both were hell holes to work at, with some _very strange_ people -- a majority of whom were racially diverse -- each were 24 hour per day/seven day per week operations, at least in the Operations Departments if not the 'customer service' area, both Diners and Amoco had a large number of thieves among their own employees and labor disputes among the workers, etc, particularly among the racially diverse young ladies of whom both Diners and Amoco Credit Card were full of.
After a particularly notorious incident in New York City, where Diners management had planned secretly to close their office and move to Denver, CO (at Denver Tech Center) and several hundred of their employees -- suspecting the worst -- on the Wednesday before Thanks- giving that year chose to _riot_ (police had to be called to vacate the offices) and _take hostages_ from the mysterious place called the 'computer room' three floors above (the rioters barricaded themselves in the computer room, took their hostages, and proceeded to throw three reels of tape (as yet un-backed up customer receivables) out the window down to Columbus Circle several floors down, shredding the tape as they tossed it out the window, Diners was about to call it quits totally. Alfred Bloomingdale and other Diners executives were out on Columbus Circle trying to gather up the shreds of computer tape while police were herding the employees out. It sort of reminds one of the stink at Norvergence on closing day when no one had gotten paid ... remember that one?
But Diners _had_ paid everyone; no one had gotten cheated, in fact they even got their Thanksgiving Day turkeys this Wednesday before the start of the American-traditional four day Thanksgiving weekend. (Most companies give Thursday and Friday, plus the weekend.) But Diners 'forgot to mention' until as they were handing out the turkeys to everyone, "have a great four day weekend, but don't bother coming back on Monday, cause we won't be here, we are relocating to Denver, CO." And they did not bother to say what it is generally presumed management was thinking: Salaries in Denver (in 1968 still a mostly rural small town) will be a lot less; the work ethic will be a lot better; instead of a lot of high-priced lazy anti-VietNam radicals who work in an incompetent way when they feel like it, we will inherit in Denver many housewives and 'regular' people who will love their jobs and work for far less than you city people and not only that, but _they_ will all be _white_. The employees responded by wrecking the whole office until the police arrived to crack open some heads, etc.
Amoco observed it all ... and had been thinking for some time how they would prefer to move somewhere else other than Chicago -- Des Moines, Iowa perhaps -- for the same reason that Diners wanted out of New York City in the middle 60's, but Amoco knew better than to just pack up and sneak out of town in the middle of a holiday weekend, so when in
1972 _they_ decided to move to Des Moines, they gave their employees a full _two year notice_ of their intentions, so as not to have a repeat of the Diner's Club situation. And a couple months, or billing cycles later, when Diners got the rude awakening of what they had lost in New York -- they wound up writing off slightly over two million dollars in credit card receiveables for which merchants had been paid but customers had not been billed and would not be billed since the computer tapes and paper tickets could not be reconstructed -- Amoco took the hint and treated their employees much better, with a two year advance notice that they were getting out of town. Later that same year, the bottom fell out at Diners, and a consortium which included CNA Insurance and Amoco bought up the leftovers. Amoco decided they would start a new credit card lable, called 'Torch Club' which was Diners and Amoco put together, and offer Torch Club only to their very best customers. Citicorp would not pick up Diners until 1981, about twelve years later.With all that in mind -- that Alfred Bloomingdale almost wrecked his company -- in fact Citicorp refused to say much about Bloomingdale at all in their _History of Diner's Club_, I would like to tell you about Mr. Bloomingdale's personal Diners Club card. Not his company card, his _personal_ card. It was stolen from him, probably by one of the various prostitutes he went out with all the time. I say this only because it has some relevance. Many people know -- either because they read the papers when he was alive or whatever, that Al Bloomingdale was very much sexually into S&M, 'rough trade', or whatever you wish to call it. He was indiscrete with the hookers he would pick up. After he died, one lady started a lawsuit to get his life savings claiming he had promised her all his money. True or false, I do not know, but Al Bloomingdale was _kinky_ to say the least. In one such affair, someone picked his pocket and made off with his Diners Card and other stuff. Due to the incompetence of the employees at Diners in New York and later at Amoco in Chicago and, in fairness, the lack of effecient computer systems in those days, the thief _lived on that Diners Card for about a year_. The fact that the mimeographed 'hot sheet' had his number listed, the fact that store clerks would call in for approvals and be told to decline that stolen card from Al Bloomingdale, the card never got collected, the charges kept coming in, etc. It seems whenever it got close to the crook losing the card (because a store clerk actually checked the hot sheet or called in for approval and was told to decline the sale, this thief would bully the clerk or the authorization person; one of those "Don't you know who I am? By this time tomorrow I will have your job!" That kind of routine.
One night the crook's automobile stalled somewhere, I do not know where, only that _I_ was working that overnight shift at the Amoco center when I got a phone call from this pipsqueak kid in high school somewhere working the late night shift at a gas station somewhere, asking for approval on a TBA (tires, batteries, accessories) sale and the labor involved. I saw _whose card_ it was, and the status of that account. This, by the way, was in early December sometime, maybe a few days after Thanksgiving. The Pip Squeak was all excited: "I was about to give this guy his car back and then on the list you sent me I saw his card number listed. The guy is arguing with me and told me if I did not honor his card he was going to get me fired."
I asked the Pip Squeak where is the car now? He told me it was still on the rack but he was finished with his work. I told him you keep that car up on the rack, which is your right. You have a workman's lien on that car until he pays the bill, and he is not going to get it paid with that card. I asked him if he still had the plastic there. He said he did, so I told him (by then the pip squeak had told me his name was Timmy) "Timmy have you got a pair of scissors there or a sharp cutting blade?" He said he did and I asked him, "Timmy, would you like to make fifty dollars?" I think his eyes almost bulged out of his head as he said "Oh, yeah man, I really need the money to get Christmas presents for my family, what do I have to do to make that kind of money?"
I told him, "Timmy, it is very simple. Take your scissors and cut that card into a few pieces now while we are talking, and then I want you to mail the card pieces to Diners, PO Box (something), Chicago, IL and when I get those card pieces you will get by return mail a check for fifty dollars, how does that sound? Are you afraid of this guy? Don't be; if you need help just call police; tell them you want your money before you release the car. Timmy assured me that a couple of his buddies were there "so I know this dude won't try any ##@& with me." I guess his buddies there enforced the rule about no car off the rack ready to go until cash money is paid. Two or three days later there were the pieces to the card along with a chicken-scrawled note saying he was told to return this card. Most lost/stolen/abused card rewards were fifteen dollars, but up to fifty dollars could be authorized in extreme cases, as this one was. The guy _did_ call up a few minutes later, making a last ditch effort to convince me that he was Alfred Bloomingale and I was going to get fired for what I did. I told him it sounded a good deal to me since I hated working there anyway.
Timmy got his check from Diners/Amoco a couple weeks before Christmas but the part I liked best was when the office manager asked me to come by his office a week or so later. "I heard that you picked up Al Bloomingdale's credit card." I said I had. He handed me an envelope and said "thanks very much". Inside the envelope was a check from the credit card office for five hundred dollars and a note from Al Bloomingdale saying "thank you for helping with this." That was a good Christmas for me also.
So remember, December is not only the season to commit suicide but it is also the time of year for all the scam artists to come out of the closet.
PAT