My sister just lost 100,000+ pesos

[toonski84]

Wait, they made you quit your job because of your sickness? I mean, do they have sick leave or anything over there?

[Zack]

One thing...why would anyone walk around with $2000, or 100,000 Pesos?

[Mech1031]

best not to question that, sorry there rel. i'm sure the phillipine justice system will act on it. at least she didn't get pick pocketed. (yeah, its not as bad as gun point but you never know who did it if you got pick pocketed!!!)

[toonski84]

Muggers are never found. In Atlanta, they happen every night. If you go out at the early morning by yourself, there's a significant chance you might get mugged. And police aren't exactly going to send out a full investigation team for such a crime.

[Mech1031]

of course not, your talking about two different police forces. i'm sure in the phillipenes they are much more strict. and i didn't mean it to sound like "because they mugged your sister, they will go with a full out investigation", what i meant was "they will eventually slip up somewhere and get caught". i see what your saying though...

[Zack]

I dunno...Muggings are considered a very low-level crime, unless there is assault involved...
In Canada, anyway...

[toonski84]

Do what? He stole cash. How do you slip up? Is he going to stand on a clock tower and brag about what he did? Unless you steal a credit card or somehting, there's no way to track it. It's a petty crime, and the world isnt perfect. The best thing to do is to use a credit card, and get a plan with theft insurance, and carry less than 25 bucks on you.

[Agamemnus]

Or nothing.

[Zack]

OK, let's buy a bottle of water from a street vendor....With a credit card! :wink:

[oracle]

Have you guys ever heard of EFTPOS?

In New Zealand, you can get EFTPOS cards (Electronic Fast Transaction at Position Of Sale). You are not allowed to get into debt with them, but they go with your "current" account (ie the account you use for day-to-day stuff), so you can quickly pay for items directly from that account. Your card has a PIN number that you're not supposed to divulge, and you can cancel it at any time (eg. just after you've been mugged). I work in a supermarket, and over 90% of orders larger than those for express lanes are payed for by EFTPOS. Becase most people use EFTPOS these days muggers and mugging in general is quite rare, virtually unheard of in my city of around 100,000 people, and the occasional mugging you hear of in Wellington (350,000 people) happens at night, to people who were not taking basic safety precautions anyway (walking in a group etc), and the police can actually ask on the news for people matching the description of the mugger, cos there's not many of them.

This has meant that burglary has probably increased, but the police are definately hard at work solving these cases, and in most cases people have insurance. Burglarys are much "safer" in a way, because most burgalars pick times when the home occupants are out.

EFTPOS is a great thing, America would be a better place for having it. It's available to people as young as 11 or 12 and generally free, and by now the vast majority of businesses in NZ have EFTPOS facilities, including small places like dairys.

So Zack, that idea of buying water with a card isn't so outlandish - I have people put 60 cents of EFTPOS sometimes

And toonsk, Rel mentioned in his "uric acid" thread that he quit his job

Rel, glad your sister is still alright. My mum told me that whenever you get into a situation like that, you've got to put your life before your money, cos it's too important to waste.

Crime does suck