I work for a retail company. There are more ways that card numbers are stolen than you can even imagine. Also, in most cases, the numbers are sold quickly (often to someone overseas) and then they are used for very small “test” transactions. The good news is the banks have gotten really good at figuring out a theft quickly and notifying you. Sometimes a retailer where you used your card has been breached and your number stolen but the retailer might decide not to notify cardholders. In most cases they are supposed to, but it doesn’t always happen.
It is also not unusual for the thief to sit on the number for months before trying it.
Let me repeat that I am totally impressed with the cc company. None of these charges went through; they were denied at the store via the cc company. Dh dealt with the cc company and was told that they ran algorithms to see how likely is is that a charge is legitimate. The week before, I made a charge at a nail salon in California, and that wasn’t flagged. Why? Because they knew that I had booked a flight to California months earlier for that time frame. That’s pretty awesome.
“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.”
No, I do not have a single ATM card. The cards are linked to the same account, but they have different numbers, so it is easy to track on the statement who made the purchase. It was probably a requirement of the fraud department of our credit union, the issuer of the bank. The charge was greyed out of our statement immediately after I made the call, but I had to submit a signed, sworn statement that I did not make the charge, and then got three letters from them: a confirmation that there was an investigation by the fraud department, a confirmation that Visa has finished its own investigation but it is not closed, and a confirmation (after the 60 period) that the case is closed and the greyed out charge is removed off the statement permanently. I did not have to pay the charge during this time, but if the investigation uncovered that it was my fault, I would have had to pay the charge and the accrued interest.
I received a fraud alert while I was using my credit card at a Target store in NC. They were alerting me to the purchase I was making. And they froze my account! I was happy they were being vigilant…but I was less than thrilled to have a $500 purchase held up while they found a supervisor to deal,with it all…and unfreeze my account.
I am sure the folks behind me in line were even less thrilled!
But it happens. Now I call the company any time I’m traveling OOS.
We did have one strange case where we had to argue with visa about a fraudulent transaction. A charge showed up for a few hundred bucks for some kind of smoothie company in another state. When we googled the company, there were hundreds of posts from people saying they had fraudulent charges with the company.
So the funny part is that after we complained, visa actually wanted us to have a 3-way conference call with this smoothie company. The smoothie place was actually arguing that the charges were valid! W got pissed and told the visa rep to go google the company to see all the complaints and no, we were not interested in having a 3-way conference call to talk to these crooks. Charge got reversed without a call.
Back to the main topic, one very common way for credit card numbers to get stolen is via spoofed card readers at gas stations. Apparently it’s quick and easy to put some kind of fake reader over the real reader. It’s supposed to be most common at gas stations that don’t get a lot of traffic so the crooks have time to do the replacement without people seeing. We think we ran afoul of this more than once on road trips to D’s school. At least twice we’ve had our credit card company call us while we were on the road to ask us about questionable transactions that had just happened, usually after we had just taken a break and gassed up.
As I recall, we also had to sign a sworn statement and mail it to Bank of America Visa back in 1997 or so when a $200 grocery charge appeared on our statement.
Good reminder about calling the cc issuer before traveling. We took a cruise last summer and I called a couple of days before we left. The information they took was detailed: the dates of departure and return, the city we sailed from, every port we’d be in, and the name of the cruise line for on-board charges.
I got delayed and blocked trying to buy something at Michael Kors in Vegas a couple of years ago. They texted me to confirm that I was making the purchase, but I wasn’t looking at my phone and the card was declined. I had to call them from the store. Vegas is a high theft area.
My daughter was traveling in South Africa when she was the victim of credit card fraud a couple of years ago. Her card had a low limit and I was monitoring her purchases and transferring money from her checking account as needed. (She didn’t have a smartphone at the time, just a cheap cellphone she’d bought in Cameroon while a PCV.) While she was in Cape Town, there were two charges for a Domino’s Pizza in NYC. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/nyregion/pizza-orders-reveal-credit-card-scheme-and-a-secondhand-market.html?_r=0. When we contacted the cc company we were told that subsequently some one had tried to charge tickets to a European soccer tournament which was declined as over limit.
worked for amex for 10 yrs si here’s the law - on your side but smaller issuers may give you a harder time - but larger issuers have your “lifetime value” calculated to know how much they need you vs they dont. that may affect how willing they are to write stuff off when it’s fraud vs making you put it in writing. once had a fairly hard
time w capital one - who didn’t know me too well. had to threaten to write ftc to get the fraud permanently removed from my acct. that was fun. https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0219-disputing-credit-card-charges
When D moved cross country for school, she and I were buying supplies at Walmart or Target. She runs her card to pay for the purchase and it was denied. Runs it again, denied. I ran mine. It went right through.
I think that if your credit limit is high, it is expected that you will travel and be charging things all around the country. Not so if the limit is low.
All she had to do was call the CC company to tell them of the move and no problems since.
We had a hotel charge in Arizona at a time when DH was overseas for work and I was home making the usual charges. Had to document where we were, but that’s the only time we had to do anything more than protest the charge.
I practically had to sell my first born child to B of A to deal with CC fraud with them. I had a power of attorney to deal,with all financial issues…and they had a copy of it. She was in the peace Corps in a village in a third world country. Her credit card was locked in a safe in the country capital. Stupid things they said to me…
Just have her call the 800 number on the back of the card (um...she didn't have the card).
Your POA was mailed to the wrong P.O. Box (OK...so,what did you do with it...since clearly you company got it)
Can we mail your daughter a new credit card in Africa? (NO...mail it here if you must).
The thing that finally got their attention…I said politely “we are not paying for these charges, and neither is the person who stole this card number. Could you please close this account?” And finally they said yes.
I think a lot of how this gets handled is dependent on the company. We do NOT have B of A…and we have never had customer service issue.
Seems right. When I recently contacted American Express in a fraud situation, the customer service rep assured me, “Don’t worry about any of this. I can see you’ve been a customer for 40 years, and we’ll take care of you.” Um. great, but ouch? Credit card fraud and a reminder of my advanced age, all in the space of an hour!
I once googled “Bank of America is evil” and many, many links came up! My issue with them was they were the holder of our FSA (medical spending) account several years ago. They would always challenge our pediatric visits, insisting that we upload receipts as proof or they would freeze the account. I had it out with them once, but they insisted it was just a random computer model that occasionally asks for verification of medical claims. Right. I wanted to cancel our other credit card with them but H gets weirdly sentimental about things like that. He spoke to someone on the phone and got the yearly fee waived. I don’t use the card and I don’t deal with them any more. 8-|
When we have had fraudulent charges, the companies have caught it before we did. We just confirmed they were fraudulent, they removed it, closed the account and sent us a new card. Never had to do anything to prove otherwise. And when we’ve had non-fraudulent charges but suspicious, they’ve never blocked us but contacted us after the fact to confirm…so we’ve never be stuck trying to make a purchase.
Regarding notifying the card company before travelling. I’ve never done that (well, except for last fall for my first trip to Europe…didn’t want any surprises). And I’ve never had a problem. In fact, Amex doesn’t even want to know when we travel (check their FAQ…they state it right there).
I remember a CC company telling us about the gas station thing. If fact one of the false alarms was when my H went to the gas station followed by the grocery store. Apparently, that is suspicious behavior because thieves like to try them out in these locations.
Somehow thieves used my dad’s name with my address and account, and wrote checks on this new account. BoA let me know they tracked down the thief in Ft Lauderdale.
I transferred money from Fidelity account when I relocated, and funds were short. They took days to deposit, and so checks bounced. They covered all the charges.