My Costco Amex card was used 2x in Mexico, at a cinemark theatre. I caught it. The fraud department understood that I couldn’t have used the card locally and been in Mexico the same day.
Bookworm, we used the same line of reasoning when we had to write an explanation why a $900 hotel charge in Honolulu could not have happened on the same day I parked my car at my school and bought a grilled cheese sandwich there, too.
But that kind of thing IS possible. My spouse could be using the card to buy groceries and gas per our usual pattern while I’m using it to pay for dinner or a rental car 1000 miles away.
Our cards have different numbers. Same account.
Don’t they check IDs at hotels? Not the best place to pay with a stolen credit card.
We get emails occasionally if one of us makes a large charge at an unusual place or from someplace far from home. They’re usually legit, but not always. You can always notify your cc company when you plan on traveling and where you’re going to.
My favorite was when a cc card called me a few years ago to ask about a questionable charge and then asked, “are you trying to buy train tickets to Oslo now?”. Uh, no. That was pretty funny.
Well, a person in one state can easily be paying a charge like a hotel bill in another – all it takes is a phone call or web site. I’ve certainly used my card to prepay hotel and car rentals at vacation destinations in the past.
But bottom line, you don’t have to offer a defense or explanation to the card company. They’ll take the charge off while they investigate, and if the charge is fraudulent their investigation is going to turn up other evidence that substantiates the fraud. And if you’ve got a good credit history and good relationship with the card company… they are going to take your word for it even if their investigation is inconclusive. They probably don’t even bother to investigate with smaller level charges – I can see it being more expensive to try to chase down a $30 charge somewhere than to simply write it off. But that $900 hotel bill would have been easy enough to call the hotel and get hold of the guest registration info.
Hotels only check IDs at the front desk. There was only the hotel’s name on the charge, so I have no idea if that was a spa treatment, a lavish dinner, a tour, or some fancy gifts purchased on premises. I’ve never had my ID asked for at a hotel restaurant or at a gift shop. The fraud department only communicated to us that the charge has been removed from my account, not what they found through their investigation. The less the public knows, the less info crooks have.
I’ve had several instances of credit card fraud. Some of them were due to stupidity on my part. Once I texted a photograph of my card (front and back) to my daughter so she could use my card to buy something. This was a stupid thing to do, Within a couple of hours I got a call from the fraud department; someone was racking up charges for strippers and escort services in $1000s of dollars in several different states. Somehow, the text must have been intercepted. It freaked me out.
The saddest instance of fraud was when I held a memorial service in my home for my cousin who died young in an accident. There were hundreds of attendees, most of whom I didn’t know. Stupidly, I left my emergency credit cards where they were always kept – in an unlocked top drawer of my dresser -/ and one of them was stolen. I found out when the fraud department notified me that someone was charging up infant supplies 
– baby clothes, diapers, a crib.
Because I’ve had several instances of fraud, the fraud department monitors my account like a hawk. Any deviation from my regular routine triggers a call. I find myself having to admit that yes, that was me that charged the $2 at the McDonald’s drive thru – I don’t usually go there but I had a craving for french fries! It’s like a little conscience sitting on my shoulder.
DH just had his gov’t-issued credit card (with chip) hacked. He was in Europe for work, and charges for women’s clothing in Canada and Florida posted to his bill. Ummm, no.
We occasionally get a call from USAA if we are charging something unusual. Plane tickets, though, don’t trigger a query. Guess DH travels so much they know his routine by now.
OTOH, I dropped my credit card at cardiac rehab (paid dues that day, couldn’t find the card to pay for parking upon exit) and I called the credit card company. Someone had found the card and had contacted Chase already. No unauthorized charges. Wish I knew who it was so I could thank him/her! A week later S2 found someone’s credit card on a bench at the metro station near his office. Was a corporate card issued to an IMF employee. He brought it home and called the bank immediately. Pay it forward…
Someone made a small charge on my card at a convenience store, under $4, in West Virginia. The credit union rep told me that sometimes the thief starts with a small charge like that to see if it works. I have no idea how they got my card info since I’ve never been within 500 miles of West Virginia.
“But bottom line, you don’t have to offer a defense or explanation to the card company.”
Not true with Visa. I had to write a letter on the form sent to us accounting for our time and explaining why I thought the charge was not made by me. The charge was taken off immediately, but if the investigation result did not match our story, the charge would have been reinstalled. It took 3 letters form the fraud dept. to finalize the result.
I never had to write anything to VISA in defense. I just call them up about a suspicious charge and they take it from there, take off the chage and issue new cards.
All of our cards - MC, Visa, Amex - have the same numbers on multiple cards. That’s why if I go online and buy something, it doesn’t matter if I put my name or my H’s name on the form as cardholder.
Like Igloo, I’ve never had to “justify” a suspicious charge. I call up, tell them it wasn’t mine, done.
BB, is the card you’re referring to also usable as an ATM card? Our ATM cards have different numbers, but they are also different because I have access to different accounts than my spouse.
Our Discover has the same card #, but our 2 AmEx cards and a Visa (USAA) card have separate card #s. The bills break out which charges are mine and which are DH’s. One AmEx card is new, but one we have had for years and years. USAA replaced their MC with Visa,but the old MC had separate #s too.
My H had his card stolen some time ago and within 15 minutes, had a bunch of gas charges. (This was when gas was particularly high.) The thieves call their buddies, they all meet at a gas station and pass the card around.
A few months ago, I had a bunch of RueLaLa charges. I’ve never bought from RueLaLa.
But I’ve never had to prove that I didn’t fill up 6 cars at once or that I’m not a RueLaLa shipper. Hey wait, BB, you’re the shopper, did you get a hold of my card?!
In my neighborhood gas stations, you can use the same credit card only once in 24 hours. I had to pay cash to fill up my second car the other day.
Gas stations often put a $75-100 hold on each charge, so if a person gets a card stolen that by chance has a low balance or a lot of charges on it already, some might not go through. Probably wouldn’t work for most parents here, but maybe for some young adults with a card and a low credit limit.
My last fraud alert was for someone trying to buy a motorcycle in Alaska! The charge did not go through, but our card was cancelled and reissued with a new number. I wondered if it could be as simple as someone was manually typing in the CC number and hit the wrong number. We have had fraudulent charges on several cards and my S on his ATM card, I believe he had to fill out a paper for the ATM ones but the CC have always been easily resolved. He had used his card as a debit while traveling before he had a CC of his own.
Our LL Bean card I think is from Barclay’s and it has different numbers for each user, that is why I used that card when I made our kids authorized users while in college. My old Costco Amex had different numbers for H and I. I really liked that feature, if one card is lost both don’t need to be cancelled.
There’s often a dollar amount at which it may not be worth their while to do more than wipe the charge off your bill. As I understand it, these card companies have loss insurance. So how your own case could proceed depends. Recently, Visa jumped to attention for me. But there was another time they came back to DH, made him re-verify, some time later.