Wednesday, January 12, 2005

credit card fraud

I have finally had my first experience with credit card fraud. On Monday night, I was looking at my credit card statement online and noticed a charge from some random web site. I didn't think I had bought anything from there, but I went to the website and then I was sure that I hadn't made the charge. It wasn't porn or anything. Oh, that reminds me, we did have one unauthorized charge to our debit card from a porn website. But this is much worse than that. Anyway. On my statement, there was a phone number next to the website name, so I called it and it was a voicemail for some guy named Alex and it sure did not sound like a business phone. So, I called the credit card company and wanted to dispute the charge as unauthorized. The dispute department was closed for the night. This is find very strange. Anyway. I came home early yesterday and was gonna call them back, when I checked my email and saw that I had an email from the credit card company saying that my account had been suspended due to possible fraud. FRAUD! Holy crap! Heck yeah there's fraud because I didn't make that charge! So, to make a long story short, I talked to the fraud department and they asked me if I made that charge that posted - um, no. Then they asked me if I made two other charges, one for $339 something and $33, to two different website companies. Um, no. He said that they had declined those charges, because they (being the credit card company) suspected that they might be fraud. I was totally shocked. The guy said that they will close that account and issue me a new account number and take care of the charge that did post, so I will not be responsible for it. Thank god. It wasn't a lot of money, only $25, but I still didn't want to pay for it. I just kept saying, "Oh my god. I can't believe this happened." I thanked the guy over and over. The last time I had used that card was on Amazon and when I purchase using Amazon, they have my credit card on file, so I just point and click and I don't have to put the number in each time. So, I went to Amazon and deleted all the cards that I had kept on file with them. I recommend you do this too. I don't know if Amazon is responsible for these three different places getting my info, but since that was the last time I used it, I am taking precautions. And after my mom's advice, I put a fraud alert on my social security # with the credit bureaus and got a copy of my credit report. There was nothing on my credit report that was fraud, thank god. (that rhymes!) It will all be ok. It will not effect me in any way. The worst part about it is not knowing how it happened. I have my card in my possession. It was not stolen. People used to tell me things like that all the time when I worked at Discover, but at least I am not naive enough to have thought it would never happen. I will not say the cliche that I thought it would never happen to me. I am just upset that I don't know how. I want to know how. Bastards.

No comments: