Hmmm… I literally sighed just after reading the prompt for this week. For this week’s prompt, we are asked to share an UNFORGETTABLE OOPSIES and it didn’t take my brain up to a second to remember that faithful day when I had an unfortunate experience. I cried. I was so pained and angry at myself. The truth is, since the era of digital payments and transactions, I have been one of the most happiest people because it has made my life a lot easier and had given me more willingness to give freely than before.
For me, it is way easier just going to my bank app to send someone a little amount of money they requested for than giving away my cash at hand, especially after the limited cash experience in my country. I find giving out cash a little harder than just getting the person’s account details and sending them the money. Because of this and many more other reasons, I just love the idea of digital transactions compared to physical transactions. But then, I can’t even count how many times I have made transactions to the wrong accounts and it always hits differently every single time. I remember there was one time someone asked me to send them airtime from my bank app and they will give me the money as cash. I was very happy about it and I quickly asked them for their number to send it to them.
He called the number twice just to confirm that was the account I was sending to but only for me to send it, before he finally realized that it was the wrong number he was calling all along. He recently lost his SIM card and he was already so used to that number. I was pained for him even though he was the one that made the mistake. Because of that experience, most times I just feel tempted to want to prefer just buying a physical recharge card rather than buying digitally but guess what? I’m still the first person to still suggest buying digitally, lol.
Well, that’s by the way. The most recent experience I got as related to an unforgettable oops was the day I went to the supermarket to do a mini shopping and I realized late that the account I wanted to make transaction from was not with money and I decided to quickly send the money from my Palmpay bank app to my Opay app. While I was making the transaction, I saw something unusual but I felt it won’t be a problem. Because I have already sent money to that account multiple times, it was already saved as beneficiary so all I had to do was click on the name. When I clicked on it, I typed the amount I wanted to send and it showed a different name but it was still my account number.
Instead of me to stop sending, I still proceeded to sending thinking it will magically correct itself the way it also magically showed up. Lo and behold ladies and gents, my N10,000 was gone. Eii! My heart skipped so many heartbeats because why won’t it? The account name I saw was my brother’s own but something was off about the name that I only noticed after completing the transaction. I tried calling my brother to ask him if he received the money but he said he didn’t and at that point, I knew I had made a terrible mistake.
I was so pained because I still had to pay for things I have bought which was just N8k compared to what I just lost. I had so many regrets and “if I had known” thoughts but in the end, I learnt the hard way. Do I regret using digital transactions now? No, I still prefer it, lol but I was truly pained and devastated that day.
Thanks for reading through. ❤️