Stolen Purse in Mexico, it’s a wrap (nearly)

On Saturday April 2, a friend took me to dinner for my birthday in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. My purse was stolen while I was thoroughly enjoying my jerk chicken and macaroni & cheese.

It has been 22 days since the theft and today – finally – things are nearly back to normal.

I did lose about $200 that I’ve never seen again, as well as a new homemade face mask from Merida that I adored, a debit card, credit card and my US drivers license. More than anything, I lost a lot of time and energy (and tears) on this dilemma.

You can read about my experiences with how Capital One, Charles Schwab, Apple and AT&T helped and/or hurt me during this. (Links coming soon)

One of the worst parts of this was dealing with two-factor authentication for many of my accounts. I have been blocked from accessing my Capital One, Paypal, Venmo, Wise (slightly different) and Pen Fed accounts because I didn’t have my phone to give a code to authenticate my identity.

Every other company that I am of client of (Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Chase, AT&T, Apple), all had alternative options to authenticate- either through email, verifying questions, PIN code, etc. But these five… especially Capital One and Paypal, were AWFUL to deal with. More on that in another post.

After posting my situation on Facebook the day after it occurred, my friend Danielle offered to clear an old iPhone X for me. My Aunt Pam offered to ship it along with a new AT&T chip (no, you cannot get a US AT&T chip in Mexico, believe me- I tried). My intention was to have my aunt mail the package directly to my house here in Mexico – seems simple and normal, right?

I learned differently and just in time. In Mexico, it is highly advised not to have electronics shipped from other countries. It’s common that they will get stopped at customs for taxes. If that happens, you should choose to send your items back to the original recipient or kiss them goodbye. Another alternative is to hire a customs broker in advance, but I hadn’t known about this until later.

Luckily for me, my friend Liz was heading to Miami so I asked her if she would mind if I sent the package there for her to bring back. She agreed. The package safely arrived in Miami and Liz brought it safely back to Mexico for me.

I picked up my phone and SIM from her this morning and spent the afternoon activating my new phone with AT&T and getting back into all of my accounts. Such a pain.

With AT&T, It took a bit of time since my number had been suspended, but they did make it simple to get my phone back up and running. The agent John was very patient and helpful. In about 20 minutes, iCloud was setup and phone service running as normal. Whatsapp messages from the past 3 weeks were delivered when I signed into the app. All text messages (SMS, MMS and iMessage) from that time are gone forever. Adios.