Credit Card Q: Charges not showing up.

Factual Questions
1

We have a rarely used CC and no charges have shown up on it since July. Problem is, we’ve used it 3 times in the last few months. Most recently a couple weeks ago. The charges aren’t showing up online.

Called the CC company and they’ve confirmed no charges. The phone droid didn’t have a script to deal with this issue so no help there.

We like keeping our bills paid, not having interest/finance charges, not having credit problems, and in particular not having the state ticked off at us (the latest is to the DMV). We keep the CC for situations when someone won’t take our main card.

What can one do in this situation? Mrs. FtG will use the card tomorrow as a test.

(Note: answers in the “Go on a spending spree dude!” category don’t work for us.)

2

Were these electronically-processed transactions or done by carbon paper imprints?
Perhaps the vendors haven’t mailed in the transactions yet?

3

I asked a question somewhat similar to this on October 2nd of this year. On September 3rd I had some flowers sent to my wife while I was out of town on business. After a month I was wondering why they hadn’t billed my card. As it turned out, to this day they never billed my card.

What I wasn’t aware of when I started that thread, was that the flowers began to wilt and die after 3 days and my wife complained to the florist. They promptly replaced the flowers. I’m wondering if this isn’t why they didn’t bill my card.

4

The first was a filled in paper form, so we weren’t worried until recently. The others are standard card swiping transactions.

5

You could just send the credit card company a check for the amount you owe. That way it’ll show up as a credit until the charges are put forth by the vendors.

Or you could call the credit card company and say your card was missing, that way they’ll issue you a new number. This will not prevent the vendor from submitting the bills but it will help you if you don’t want to pay.

The vendor must get an approval on the credit card. This credit approval is only good for a set period. For instance from 3 days to 1 month, depending on your agreement with the credit card company.

So if he submits the charge with the approval and the approval is expired, and you pay the charge, fine. If you do a chargeback then you’ll win, because the vendor will not have a valid approval.

If you call in your card as missing, this will prevent a vendor from getting approval on the card again. He can still submit the charge, but if you dispute it he’s toast.

Of course there is an ethical thing involved with the latter.