Stop fucking asking me to prove I didn’t open the account. Stop sending me collection notices when I’VE ALREADY SPOKEN TO YOUR FRAUD DEPARTMENT. How many fucking trained-monkey asswipes who can’t figure this out work at your company anyway? I did not open those accounts - like I already told you, like the police officer already told you, I WAS OUT OF THE FUCKING COUNTRY when they were opened.
Home Depot, Pep Boys, Lowes, and all you other snivelling, greedy goat-spawn, it’s your fucking issue. You are the ones who are willing to give out credit to any goddamn shmoe who walks in with a name. Nice fucking thinking, Home Depot and Lowes employees, who give out TWO $2500 gift certificates to someone who doesn’t even have the card! And open a huge loan account without even checking up on anything. You stupid twits want to give out credit likes it’s fucking Christmas, and then you don’t want to deal with the issue when it’s fraud. You put it on me to fill out a huge affadavit, call two or three departments, make copies of the police reports, etc. I DIDN’T HAVE A GODDAMN THING TO DO WITH THIS. NOTHING.
You little fucking twerps let the account open, you eat the money. You do the investigation. You want copies, come to my fucking house to make them. You want an affadavit, send a fucking secretary to fill one out. Don’t come whining, begging, threatening me now that the account isn’t paid. It’s your own goddamn fault. I DIDN’T OPEN IT.
I hope to God that all the people involved in any part of the decision that let your company give out credit so easily get kneecapped, have their eyes gouged out by a trembling baboon with a rusty spoon, and have large cylinders filled with the sharp-edged pieces of a thousand cut-up credit cards shoved up their rectums.
Fuckers. Take some fucking responsibility for your decisions.
Oooh, a credit card fraud thread! Happy Hanukkah to me originally posted by rexnervous
Sorry, but if we didn’t deal with people on a daily basis who run up an account, then cry “fraud” to get out of the bill, we would. I’ve had people swear on their mother’s graves they had nothing to do with it, yet it’s their signature on the application and the receipts.
I’m with you, TRUST ME, on the instant credit issue. As a fraud analyst, the very concept makes me shudder. Especially knowing how well trained store employees are in fraud detection. :rolleyes: But as long as a bank/company knows opening new accounts looks good on the books, they will take the risk that some accounts may not be valid. Sucks? I know.
And FYI…
According to Bank Regulation Z, if there is not a ‘reasonable cooperation with the investigation’, ie the affadavit, the bank can rebill you. Again with the suckiness, but it’ll be a lot easier to do it and get the account cleared/credit report corrected.
I understand you’re upset, rexnervous, but you have to meet the credit card companies halfway. Keep copies of EVERYTHING, and send everything by mail, certified, return receipt requested. Put fraud alerts on your credit report, and pull them every six months. I know it’s a pain, but the credit card companies are not going to protect your credit. It’s up to you. Good luck!
Sadly, it’s not really in the credit card company’s best interest for your credit to be good.
That’s why even the simple act of checking your own credit can lower your rating. You don’t see them offering those nice low rates to credit “risks.” To the “risky” people they offer 21 percent interest and a multitude of fees.
If you want to protect your credit it’s up to you.
You all are too rational. You need to feel my rage.
I have called the companies, called the credit bureaus, notified the FTC and the police etc. But then I get in the mail a balance statement from a company I’ve already talked to (note: I called them in September). Another company sends me a 5 page affadavit to fill out, and I’m supposed to provide copies of the police statement, etc.
I know it’s up to me to do this; the point is, it damn well shouldn’t be. I am an innocent third-party who had nothing to do with this. There was the identity thief (may he forever rest in tortuous hell) and the credit company who gave the account out (feelings towards them noted in OP).
Too fucking bad if the credit card companies have to deal with people calling up claiming fraud. That has nothing to do with me.
Basically, the credit card companies are saying I have to prove my innocence - I’m guilty until proven innocent.
So, basically, they are all fuckwads.
Now back to your regularly scheduled rational lives
I feel your rage. I too have had my credit cards, checks, etc. stolen. Luckily they did not open new accounts in my name, but they did activate and max out a Sears card that had never been used, and get my name on several stores’ bad check lists. It’s really frustrating to get everything cleared up again.
Sears didn’t seem to care when I notified them about the fraud and that they were out thousands of dollars. In fact, I got letters thanking me for my recent purchases of camcorders, appliances, etc. What really baffles me is the guy who stole my cards signed my father’s name. Um, my father is not a valid user of the card. His name appears nowhere on the account. Plus, my father has a very Dutch name, and the description of this guy was middle eastern. On other occasions, he signed my name, which is obviously female, and showed my ID! Why yes, this picture of a young blond girl looks just like you, sir!
Note to self: apparently identity theft is easy enough that you do not even have to be the same sex as the person you are supposed to be.
I know you’re pissed. I know you want to find the thief and subject him to all sorts of fun involving cattle prods and fire ants. But you have to help the credit card companies prove this crime. They’re not asking you to prove your innocence…they’re asking you to provide evidence that will help them prosecute this fuckfoon.
rexnervous, I feel your rage. You’re a victim, and you shouldn’t have to go through this shit. Unfortunately, you do have to go through it. You still have a right to be really pissed.
Home Depot wouldn’t give me a credit card because I wouldn’t give them my Social Security number. I can’t cash a check anywhere without showing my driver’s license. Do criminals have some kind of hypnotic power that causes store employees to bypass the normal security processes that legitimate customers have to go through?
I agree with ivylass. Calling is fine to get answers and get things started, but for solid, verifiable action that will hold up against a collector, you need to write things down. And register them if need be.
Word to the wise: If it’s not written down, it never happened.
What a sucky situation. I don’t see any way out of it except to assist the companies in catching this jerk. Totally unfair, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Merchants train the cashiers to make sales. That’s it. And considering the turnover rate in retail, most of the times you get some inexperienced person who is happy when the register stops beeping. The idea of verifying signatures or looking at id never occurs to them.
They know how to bullshit their way through applications and transactions. They know how to get around certain requests for information, acquire and use false information, and scam inexperienced or indifferent cashiers. It’s a little more work, but it pays off magnificently (until/unless they get caught).
And it doesn’t always end with the transaction, either: a lot of times they’re purchasing stuff, like power tools or car accessories, to resell it or use it in another scam.
But what does that have to do with rexnervous? He (she?) said he was out of the country at the time. His signature ain’t gonna be on that stuff.
And it doubly sucks because THEY’RE not the ones taking the risk. They’re risking it on behalf of the innocent consumer, and then trying to blame him when the risky business practices backfire. In my book, if someone wants to take a risk, they should have the gonads to accept the responsibility when it blows up in their face.
Hardygrrl, I wouldn’t trade jobs with you for anything. Sounds like your company wants to play fast and loose with checking out the credit applicants, then expect YOU to fix it when they get ripped off.
The point was banks get false fraud claims all the time. That’s why we just don’t take people’s word for it and erase the balance. A lot of people will get into financial trouble and cry fraud in an attempt to buy time.
You have no idea. Working for a BigAss Bank has taught me that the marketing department a) knows jack shit b) would sell their grandmothers into crack whoredom to tweak the sales figures and c) expect us to fix things.
I like my job. I like catching people. It’s a challenge. Like the sign in my cube says “No one gets past hardy”.
So, do you think other fraud investigators are a diligent as you are? The reason I ask is this: A while ago, some doofus got ahold of my credit card number, and charged a bunch of stuff. Fortunately, the credit card company was cool and didn’t give me a lot of hassle about it. But what surprised me was that this idiot who used my number used it to mail order some stuff, and the name and address of the recipient ended up on the invoice that got mailed to ME. So, being a good citizen and all, I thought I would try to help out the credit card company by calling the fraud department and giving them this information. Instead of saying something to the effect of “Thank you very much; now we will be able to nail this guy”, the fraud investigator had more of an attitude of “Yeah, o.k., whatever”. I really got the feeling that he wasn’t particularly interested in catching any real criminals.
Last week I caught someone trying to commit credit card fraud over the phone. Saved my company, the credit card company, and the person whose card had been stolen the hassle of dealing with about $1200 worth of fraudulent purchases from us.
And now I’m wondering the same thing as blowero. I now have, at my cube, the names, addresses, and phone numbers of two different people that were involved in making fraudulent purchases on a stolen credit card. The credit card company didn’t want them. How is that possible??
I’ll let you in a little secret. We (the bank) just want our money back. We get that back from the merchants for accepting the bad charges/violating the Visa/Mastercard-merchant agreement. As for punishing the bad guys…with all the fraud we get (most major V/M issuers average a $50-75 million a year fraud loss), we can’t go after every perp. It makes better business sense to just get the money back and tweak the system to catch it quicker. The victim can always file a police report, and the bank will cooperate. Honestly, a lot of these guys don’t get caught. I wish it was different.
Originally posted by White Lightining
Two words : Idiot Rep
I would have taken the information if only to notify my customer and get the account closed if it wasn’t already. See my response to Blowero. With phone orders, the odds are good that info you were given was “false info”. The phone’s a pay/cell phone, the address an empty house or mailboxes etc. The perps know the merchandise will get dropped off and pick it up later.
