Pain in the Patootie

[gerisullivan]

Wednesday afternoon I spent a lovely couple of hours with debgeisler and elainebrennan visiting the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The museum was great, a welcome oasis of air-conditioned comfort, calm, and visual stimulation on a hot summer afternoon in the city. Thanks for suggesting it, Deb! I look forward to returning again. Soon, I hope.

Then I tried to use my credit card to pay for our parking.

The credit card reader at the MFA wasn't cooperating. After two "card denied" messages, I stuck a $20 in the slot and soon walked out with the validated parking card and my change.

I didn't think any more about the card not working until I arrived home shortly after midnight to find a message on my answering machine from the card's fraud services unit. Oh. Seems there was a $14.53 purchase from Monday night that flagged something in their system. Hmmm. "Let me think," I said. The charge was from an off-name publishing company. I might well have made some small purchase online. Hmmm. We reviewed a couple of other charges from the last day or two; they were legit. We left the card on hold so I could investigate further.

An hour of research later, and I was still plagued by a hind-brain recollection of something, but none of my records searches turned up anything likely. I was going to sleep on it, dreading the need to change over all of my automatic payments if the charge was fraudulent. (The routine in such cases is to cancel the card and issue a new one.)

I finally remembered to go take a closer look at all of the recent charges. Eek. The $14.53 use two days ago was peanuts compared to the fraudulent $160 and $170 charges from two different sources on consecutive days last week. Okay, that was utterly clear. I called fraud services back and canceled the card. I then quickly changed the account info on my cable bill over to a still-working card, and sent the cable company email telling them what happened and asking them to confirm that they have the new info in time for my July 28th billing date, or to tell me I'll need to do a manual payment this month.

That was the urgent one. If my memory serves, I have at least a few more days before any more automated payments are due. More like a week, I think. I'll sleep, then make my way through changing account info on everything else. Fortunately, it should be easier to remember everything than it usually is -- I just went through this entire process updating the expiration date on the card a few weeks ago.

I didn't eat at or even visit The Forks when I was in Winnipeg last month. (A friend had his credit card info stolen when dining there last July.) I don't even know if my info was pulled from an in person transaction or something online. All I know is that enough of my old card info is out there to get two fraudulent charges through from two different sources last week before tripping up on a much smaller fraudulent charge this week. It could have been most anything, I suppose. What I know is that changing everything is annoying. Not as annoying as if the fraudulent charges had numbered dozens, hundreds, or thousands, or if it had hit while I was out of the country or otherwise still on the road, but still....



Onward.

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

My card trips over all sorts of tiny and uneventful transactions (yes, we do £20 to London Transport about twice a week, every week, you should have got the hang of it by now) but failed to notice two computer orders in a week a few months ago. I'm now very careful with the statement, which is complicated because two of us use the card so most things that I don't recognise are Steven.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I know this is a pain but it could have been much worse. The thieves seem to be thinking small.

I had a few fraudulent charges last year from some singles organization. The credit card issuer said to cancel the card but because it was a contactable organization I called them and made sure that they put me on their "do not ever approve a charge" list and I've never had the trouble again. As bohemiancoast says, you unfortunately have to be eternally vigilant.

I've frankly been totally amazed that I haven't heard from Chase Visa in the last week or two because I've been ordering a lot of online stuff to be delivered to Santa Fe and picked up while we're in the US. The security dept is always putting holds on charges that are legitimate when we go to the US, or when I return here -- telling them I'm traveling doesn't seem to help. Also, I haven't been able to buy some small electronic things at all because the web sites require that the shipping address be a registered one or they cancel the order.

Good luck with all of the arrangements.

[lauriemann.livejournal.com]

I hope you have it all straightened out now!

We've had two credit card fraud problems over the last eight years or so. Both were resolved quickly and didn't cost us any more then the nuisance of having to cancel existing cards.

[ckd]

The other day, my cell phone rang and the display showed a number I didn't recognize with a familiar sounding area code. It turned out to be my bank calling to verify my recent charges because they'd seen odd activity on the card over the previous couple of days.

In particular, they saw two consecutive attempts to charge $400+ with Air Canada that hadn't gone through.

Those were actually mine, though after the second failure I wound up using a different card (since it seemed like some kind of glitch in the "Visa verified" online purchase security thingy). I was happy to have them be that careful, especially since they were so quick about it and so minimized the hassle of either a real problem or a false alarm.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

I've had similar calls from fraud units, and mine were all (so far, knock wood) false alarms, with the items actually being mine.

Just to be safe, Mike and I called the companies whose cards we'd be using on vacation and said, "Charges may come in from the following five countries...these are our charges..."

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I've had almost the opposite issue, in having legitimate charges that look suspicious get flagged. For instance, the mobile phone rental company in Japan put a $0.01 charge on the card to confirm that it worked after I made a reservation.

I've made a point of contacting my credit cards and the two banks with which I have accounts to tell them that I will be in Japan from August 27-September 18 and that charges from Japan during that time should be legitimate. I don't want to have my cards go dead on me while I'm in Japan!

[alces2.livejournal.com]

I've had those calls too. Some charges were made by me. Some were not. One arose from one purchase I made at ancestry.com. I charged a membership and then many other charges appeared. After the credit card company called me I called ancestry.com. I asked if they were going to try to find out who made the charges since they obviously had arisen based upon one charge I had made there. They said no. I was amazed. Since that point I've found that one of the main credit cards I use on-line allows me to set up a special one time payment amount and card number. The card number is good for one charge and for no more than the limit I set. Seems like a good idea to me for any new online services/purchases I use/make.

One-time charge number

[hazelchaz]

What bank is that? Sounds like something I'd like to have.

Re: One-time charge number

[(Anonymous)]

Bank of America. ShofSafe account.

Re: One-time charge number

[alces2.livejournal.com]

Bank of America. ShofSafe account.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

I track my charges online; it's much easier to remember something a day or two later than a month later, if I neglected to enter the charge when I made it.

Monthly auto-charges aren't so bad to change, at least they're easy to find.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Me too, and I usually check them every day when I first sign on. I've never had any false charges, though.