That’s possible. And it isn’t necessarily Bank of America’s system that’s wrong, but the date on the PC in the store that the credit card machine is connected to. Which might have been entered by the minimum-wage clerk when bringing the system up at the start of their shift.
I remember a time when I got a large Sears store was giving out receipts that had the wrong date on them. This was years ago, on a big mainframe system, where the computer operator had entered the wrong date on starting up the system. About the 3rd purchase I made, I pointed it out to the clerk. They already knew about it, but said that it couldn’t be fixed without re-IPLing the computer, which would shut them all down for a half-hour or so. Thus they just continued to operate with the wrong date.
This is all find and good except the B of A person said that they had declined the charge that AM and gave me the time. Gave me the impression that the system was working in real time.
About a year ago, my credit card company called me up and asked me to confirm a charge I had not made. It was the first such charge on my card, and we got it cancelled and a new one sent out.
I don’t know how they did it. The charge in question was for some software, delivered online. While that’s not something I buy all the time, I certainly have in the past. All I can guess is that they used some information outside of my own credit history. It only takes one reported fraudulent charge at a certain POS to make them start to look much more closely at other charges made there.
Now, I wonder if the CC company will get the USPS Postal Inspectors to follow up on this? Not only does the occasional postal worker (whether the delivery carrier, the sorter, etc.) swipe mail, but sometimes people will check mailboxes right after the carrier goes through, to see what they can take - especially any envelopes that have hard, credit-card-shaped objects in them.
Speaking as someone that has worked in bank security backshops AND in retail card fraud detection, it is “secret sauce” but not that secret.
Statistical modeling on financial transactions (be it logistic regression/decision trees/neural nets or all three and others) is hardly a secret. The exact flavor of how these institutions do it is IP but the methods themselves are well known (especially to fraudsters).
There are several data elements about the transaction that could have sent up red flags with your bank but there’s no way to know which one(s) unless you’re an insider in their Risk Mgmt dept and even then it would be extremely difficult to figure out due to the complexity of the models.
Citibank has been fantastic to me over the years in their fraud prevention methods. Sometimes it’s an inconvenience, but it’s well worth it overall. Every time they call, it’s because it’s been something out of the ordinary even for me. Only once was there legitimate fraud, and that really kind of sucked because I was working in Mexico which made it difficult to change all of my auto bill pays, receive a new card, and such.
(Note, the fraud was committed on the US side, and I know exactly where it happened, as the crappy hotel clerk in question tried to use my front-of-license address, whereas the corrected address was affixed on back.)
I have had a mixed-bag of experiences with fraud prevention officers. One idiotic credit card company allowed two charges. minutes apart, for multiple thousands of dollars for “advertising services,” at 3:00 a.m., when I was pickpocketed and, despite refunding my money, refused to investigate the “merchant” who was quite clearly in cahoots with the thieves. But awhile back I had a company call me and flag the fact that someone had tried to wire money by Western Union using my card number (no idea how they got the information, as the card was still in my possession). They declined it and sent me a new card within minutes. And periodically I get calls about “odd” purchase patterns – it can be foreign purchases, multiple charges in different cities in a short period, and I’m pretty sure they flag certain kinds of merchants, as I’ve been called twice after making relatively large purchases at sporting goods stores (I suppose lots of low level crooks are young punks whose idea of a great coup is to buy a few pairs of Air Jordans). In college I got a couple of embarrassing calls along the lines of “we thought it highly unlikely that anyone could spend that much money in multiple sports bars in a single afternoon.” Err, thanks for checking, but the charges are legit . . . .
Whereas they’re a major pain in my hiney. Every month they keep flagging transactions where I buy food and supplies on base. Every month I call in to authorize the charges.
Some history of their “fraud” alerts with me: When I arrived at my base in Japan, my first purchase was a laptop computer and some supplies at the BX. I bought some food at the commissary and food court after that. I made a number of small (under $50) purchases the following couple of days at the same places. The third day, I tried returning something from I bought with the computer. Citibank declined that transaction. Calling them, they flagged the five bucks I spent at Taco Bell the second day after the computer purchase, not the thousand dollar computer purchase.
Strangely, when I travel to a new city within Japan without notifying them of my destination, Citibank lets the charges go through without a problem. If they were off-line approvals, I can understand a delay before Citibank flagged the account. But they have never flagged or declined a Japanese purchase. Yet they flag one of the first food court purchases of the month. Every month.
About a year ago I was at work, checking my bank balance online (I was doing so daily as I was waiting for my tax refund) and I saw a charge for $947 (on my Visa-branded debit check card) and change go up for approval, that very day - with what ended up to be at a Walmart store in Snellville, Georgia. I live and work on the west coast. I went to my bank at lunchtime, authenticated with the bank teller who looked stuff up on the computer only to determine that there wasn’t enough information on her system and I should just go and call the number on my card and talk to the nice fraud people.
Upshot: I did all the fraud paperwork immediately but I was out ~$950 for a week before I got my ‘provisional credit’ and I was fortunate that nothing bounced and I didn’t have to miss any meals or cancel a vacation. Never did find out what came of the ‘investigation’; I got a letter a few weeks after that telling me that the provisional credit was now permanent, and have a nice day.
Since I have and carry a same-bank branded Visa credit-not-debit card I went back to the branch and had them cut my daily “credit” usage limit on my debit card to $50 (from $1200 IIRC), whilst leaving my pin-based debit daily limit alone at $310. And now when I have a choice I will use PIN-based first, followed by credit-not-debit card. If Visa wants me to use the Visa Check Card they’ll require the banks to issue timely provisional credits.
And it’s a separate rant, I know, but after spending millions on TV commercials and hiring celebrities to exhort people to use the Visa Check Cards instead of checks to buy things because the clerks won’t make you produce ID, you’d think they’d tell the merchants they’re supposed to actually check the signatures when they take a Visa card, and not, as they seem to do, ask for ID - and hand the card back along with the slip to be signed?