credit card hacked. item sent to me

Factual Questions
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Plus - getting notified every time the card is used is a new thing and not necessarily something everyone has set up. Or, as mentioned above, the cardholder may not notice. Whereas trying to buy a big ticket item at Best Buy in front of their cash register security cameras and the card is already flagged - not the best move. That’s the reason for testing. You don’t get to try 5 or 10 cards until one works when you’re standing at the Best Buy cash register.

In the days before cellphones were everywhere (and before roaming was cheap) I flew into an airport and needed to call the shuttle to the car rental agency. I tried my credit card in the payphone (remember those?). The call did not work. Eventually I got change and called, but when I tried to rent the car my card was declined, I had to talk to the bank and get it straightened out first. Fortunately, they accepted my explanation of what happened; but they were watching for testing even back then.

I suppose when everyone has a notification on their phone for any card use, card checking will be less of a good idea. From OP and comments, I see we’re getting there. (Only one of my 4 cards notifies me…)

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Just an FYI, you can usually set your credit cards to sent an alert (email, text, app notification) to alert you as soon as there’s a charge (all charges, charges over a certain amount etc).
I run 5 or 10 cards a day at work. I have a handful of customers that will call or email me, literally within minutes of charging the card, to ask about it.
I’m not saying everyone, or even most people are set up to do that, just that people do it.

Anyway, I’m poking around online to see what I can find. Unfortunately (for me), I’m not finding a whole lot about why people test(ed) stolen, physical cards, but I did run across this something interesting. The people testing cards aren’t just testing to see if they work, they’re testing them to verify, or figure out the billing address, CVV, expiration date.
It went on to say they’ll have the item get shipped to the billing address to not raise any red flags.