Thursday, May 01, 2008

Credit card fraud

It looks like someone, somewhere in our travels swiped the card information because a couple of unrecognized charges appeared on our account. The first one appeared about a week ago, but because pending charges often show names that are different from the final merchant names, I thought maybe it was something that I forgot about. But when I saw another charge this morning from an online site that I know I didn't make, it was time to call the card customer service. They were nice and quick about terminating the account number and reversing the charges, though Elise is now without a credit card.

I don't know how and where someone got our account. It could have been sometime when we handed our card to a wait staff at a restaurant. Or someone has really good visual memory.

Whatever the case, the incident reinforces the necessity of checking financial accounts frequently -- if not daily, then every few days -- to make sure nothing is amiss. It also shows the value of credit cards vs. debit because with credit cards, the account holder isn't responsible for any of the charges and isn't out the money.

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