Stahlke Adoption

Western Union

I tried three times today to send $600 to Masha for her translation work on our dossier. The first time, the clerk couldn't get a connection to Western Union's main website. She asked that I come back later, and she would work on the connection in the meantime.

Several hours later, the Western Union connection was up and running when I returned to try again. This time, my credit card authorization failed. That puzzled me, especially since I had called the credit card company ahead of time, and our account had plenty of available credit. It took a long time to work my way again through the credit card company's phone tree, but finally I was able to clear up the problem, which was just a technical detail. But the long wait must have been too much for the Western Union staff, who may have thought that I was a financial risk. They informed me, after all that had transpired, that they would only take cash! Considering it was after 5:00 pm on a Friday afternoon, finding that much cash was not possible. I was NOT a happy camper.

But . . . we then thought about trying the Western Union website with our credit card. By internet, however, Ukraine is not among the few countries that allow transfers to banks. Since Masha provided us all her bank account information, I'm assuming that's where she wants the money to be sent.

Well, I tried pretty hard today. Now it's the weekend, and sending the money will have to wait until Monday.

posted by Stahlkes @ 8:36 PM