What to do first -- phone Shell/EasyPay and cancel it? Get gas? Phone Allan? Skip gas, go straight to hospital? I decided I might as well get gas since I was standing there parked beside a pump, and was quickly reminded why I use the tag in the first place -- I had to get out the credit card and the Airmiles card, swipe the damn things, get the cap off the tank, and make sure I didn't do anything stupid, like put the wallet on top of the car. It's so much quicker with the tag, and the wallet doesn't come out. After all that malarkey, the screen at the pump told me to go inside, anyway, for the receipt! While I was in there, I grabbed the EasyPay brochure to phone the number on the way to the hospital.
While speeding along Oak Street, I phoned the EasyPay number and tried to remember the last time I'd used the tag, trying not to imagine how many tanks of gas a person could buy in what could be WEEKS. The fuel is included in the use of the co-op car, so I could easily find out from the mileage logs, but with a sinking feeling I realized I hadn't filled up on the last few outings.
One thing they should do is make the tag look nondescript. According to the other Shell sites, like in The Netherlands, the fob is just gray. So if someone picked it up, they wouldn't necessarily know what to do with it. It would reduce fraudulent use.
Dialling, dialling, dialling, EasyPay answering service, 'Thank you for calling Easypay', blah blah blah, press 1, press 2, blah blah blah, office hours are -- OH CRAP!!! -- then... 'If you are reporting a lost or stolen tag, press 1'-- YES YES YES!
I got a live person while I was maneouvring past 12th and Oak, so I had just enough time to tell the operator what was going on, cancel the tag, and order another one before reaching the hospital at 29th. It was, in fact, very simple, unlike the brouhaha a year ago while I was sitting in Grand Central Station, NYC, trying to explain to the EasyPay operator that my tag was stolen along with my keys, which were stolen from my friend's car parked in an underground in Vancouver, and no I was not in Vancouver but New York, and no the person who called Shell to report it was neither in Vancouver or New York but in Calgary, since I didn't have the number and I had to reach someone who could look it up for me and give EasyPay instructions to call me in NYC to verify I was indeed the keytag owner!
[An aside: not five minutes after that phone call at Grand Central Station, my accountant called, very confused to be drowned out by announcements for trains to Poughkeepsie... he still tells me that's how he remembers me out of the scads of T-2200s he does taxes for, so that's probably a good thing.]
Anyway, this was a relatively simple phone call to EasyPay, and they report it was last recorded to have been used on Jan 16th, but it didn't include today's activities. So, unless someone picked it up and used it today, I was more or less convinced it was not being used to thieving ends, filling up getaway cars, stolen armoured trucks, or joyride vehicles. What a relief.
That's all I need after today, a day that started off far too early -- before 6am -- then wandering down an alley off Denman Street in the pre-dawn darkness, in the rain, peering at a piece of paper which was supposed to tell me where the co-op car was parked. It all looks so clandestine. I think this was my 6th co-op car, another Mazda Protegé, this time a teal 2001 model. (My favourite is still the Toyota Prius, even though it isn't as zippy on hills.) Most of the time I use the cars to go to the office, so I catch the first ferry -- 7:20 -- out of Horseshoe Bay. Which means when I use a new car I am running around the West End in the early morning darkness to find its location, trying not to appear shifty as I strain to look at parked cars and license plates and trying to make out the Co-operative Auto Network logo on the back of the car. When it's that early in the morning, I am not usually 100% awake -- yeah, a bit dangerous where driving is concerned -- and unless they're parked under streetlights or lit spaces, it's pretty hard to make out colours. There are, after all, 40,000 people living in the West End, and while not everyone has a car, there are still a lot of cars!! I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days I'm going to have a run-in with a police officer in a back alley as I mistake someone's sedan for a co-op car.
