credit card fraud or mistakes

[ErikW]

First, let's review: Hallmark fiasco

Now today I got an order summary from Talbot's. A $100 gift card shipped to somebody in Norwalk, CA. At first glance it appeared to be fraud, a gift certificate going to a drop address. (I forget what the scumbags call the address they use to receive goods shipped fraudulently.) It's addressed to me and lists the last four digits of my Visa. I called my card service and checked the recent activity. Sure enough, a hundred bucks for "internet catalog order." They say I have to talk to the vendor. The vendor has to research it.

Now I think it's a human error or computer error, like the Hallmark mistake. People with poor typing skills must have CC numbers similar to mine.

[D.Hayden]

The vendor doesn't research it, the card issuer does.

Say it's fraud and contest the charge... they'll send you paper work.. but that's thier friggin job.

You should get an immediate credit, while they investigate. If they conclude thwe charge is yours, they'll add it back on. But they should at least get started.

[Guest Larry Cazes]

Last time I had a similiar mistake on my VISA it took wells fargo almost 4 months to credit my account.....Good luck.

[TheOtherErik]

Happend to me a few weeks ago. Checking my account I found a 300 dollar charge on my check card that I nor my wife made. I imediatly called the bank and they said that they would send some paper work and that i woudl have to fill out a statment and send it back in. Upon reciept of that they would give me a "provisional credit". took about 2 weeks to get my money. The charge is still under investigation.

I would push your credit card company to investigate the charges

[IPSCDRL]

Yep its up to the credit card company to investigate and they SHOULD credit your account while they do it. About six months ago I got a receipt in the mail for some collectable casino chips from some company in Las Vegas. I called the credit card company and as soon as they looked at the recent charges they knew something was wrong. There were three recent charges that I had not made. They credited me for them and sent me an affidavit to sign saying that I never made the charges. I then called the vendor to inquire about the merchandise that they had shipped to an address in CA. The vendor was surprised that I had not received my chips and confirmed the ship-to address for me. I told him that the scumbag who stole my CC number probably had the chips but *I* did not order them. He stated that he would end up eating the cost because the CC would deny the payment to him. I provided the ship address to the CC fraud department but never heard anything further.

[uscbigdawg]

Had this happen on my Corporate AmEX (I love this card!). The charges were reversed immediately when I called them on the phone with the problem and they actually caught the people! They hit like five of us from my firm (basically of us that attended the Super Bowl).

Oh well. No harm, no foul. Good luck!

Rich

[BritinUSA]

Here is the text of an article I wrote for our local newsletter in May of this year, this information as provided to me by my bank when I spotted some fraudulent debits on my credit card.

Be Afraid, be VERY Afraid !

Have you ever used the Internet to make purchases with a credit card ? If you have, then you may find this little snippet of information quite interesting and perhaps just a little scary.

When you purchase goods online with a credit card, the company that you are purchasing from sends your credit card number, expiry date, name etc. to a merchant supplier that checks all these details against those held by the credit card company and then approves the transaction. All those credit card numbers are stored on the servers that are used by the merchant supplier.

Now you may be wondering if that information that is held on the server is secure... Well oddly enough the answer in one particular instance is NO. Back in January of this year someone broke into a business and stole a server, it’s about the size of a large PC so presumably they just walked out the door with it. On this server were thousands and thousands of credit card numbers. Now the banks all know about this, but they don’t know if the thief was just after the expensive hardware or he was after those numbers.

Now the banks have a list of all those credit card numbers that were stored on the server but they have not contacted any of their customers about it. It seems that the banks are waiting for you, dear customer, to check all your accounts dating back to the beginning of this year. When you do this you may find - as I did - that some low-life, scum-sucking sack of crap has stolen your credit card number and used it without your consent.

When this happens you make a call to the bank and tell them that some weird debits have shown up on your account; They will check you credit card number against the list of numbers that were on that stolen server - you do remember the stolen server, don’t you ? - and then tell you very politely, that your credit card number may have been compromised.

Lovely, huh ?

So the moral of this story is simple;

Get your credit card statements from 1st January and double check all the debits, there may be one or two that you do not recognise, the amounts may be large or they may be small but if you don’t check you may live to regret it.

The bank may be able to get your money back and they will certainly issue you with a new credit card.

This is the extent of the actions you can take as the law takes a dim view of locating this loathsome thief and hanging him up by testicles and poking him with a cattle prod... more’s the pity...

[blackdragon]

I use my AMEX most of the time. They tend to side with the customer where others tend to side with the companys.

Ivan

SCS Vegas

[schmitz]

No card for me, I don't trust it anymore. But on the otherhand that makes it difficult to buy products in the USofA.