A Tale of Three Cities, part two

Entry #2 of an unknown number of entries.

Signing up for my Bongo International account was fairly easy.  Just a few bits of information and a credit card to validate my name and to confirm payment.  To validate, they told me that a credit card charge between .01 and .99 would appear on my credit card within 4 days.  Once I saw the charge, I would need to sign in, enter the amount that was charged, and that would allow me to continue with my order.  I did see the charge 4 days later and went back to Bongo to sign in.  But there was a problem.

I guess my Shanghai address raised some eyebrows, and my account was put on hold until I could verify my identity by sending a copy of my passport and both sides of my credit card.  I was hesitant to do this since the email would be traveling thousands of miles and through so many filters.  Who knows who would see my valuable data?  So I scanned it and encrypted it in a PDF file.

I must have encrypted it very well because Bongo couldn't open it!  10 emails, in as many days, later, my account was finally verified.  My MexGrocer, 5-Piece Tortilla Making Kit that was sitting in Bridgeport, Connecticut for 5 days was finally ready to be shipped overseas to the third city in this sordid tale: Shanghai, China