The one time our credit card number was hacked/stolen was fairly recently, and the reprobate used it to buy gas once and make regular trips to Dunkin’ Donuts. Someone living their best life under the radar I guess.
ETA my wife just reminded me that they also went to stop and shop once for a small grocery buy, which just completes the picture.
I wonder if it is setup as recurring charge, and the credit card company is notifying them that the number changed when they try to put something through on the old number.
I had some unauthorized charges from a (semi-)legitimate company I’d done business with, so the credit card company gave me a new number, they notified my recurring charges about the change, so I didn’t have to update my phone, Internet provider, etc. about the new number.
That seems. . .totally wrong to me.
For my particular case, updating my recurring chargers was convenient, because my problem was along the lines of, “Hello company I’ve done business with before, I can’t return that for a refund, because I never bought it in the first place! Hey, why won’t you talk to me anymore? I guess it’s time to do a chargeback.”
I’ve heard of the automatic updating being a problem for people who, for example, change their card number to try and get out of a gym membership.
Got a call from the CC company just now. The reason these charges looked very familiar is because the damned CC company never removed them from the system after the last time my card was compromised, and they carried over to my new card. WTF? She says she’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again, but I’m not holding my breath.
Sounds like time to get a card from a completely different bank.
I once had a bogus charge on my company issued American Express. Some book company. Not a huge amount - 50 bucks or so. I filed a chargeback, and it was removed.
A year or so later, I had to actually use my Amex, and file an expense report. Our expense system ties to our Amex, so charges get automatically carried over. Well, the charge was not carried over, but the refund WAS. So the expense system insisted that “if you got a refund for something you expensed, you need to pay that back!”. I had to attach an explanation of the situation before my expenses could be processed.
The last time I had a semi-major breach was 4 or 5 years ago. I happened to log on to check my credit card transactions (something I’m not always diligent about doing), and spotted some gasoline charges, in New Jersey.
Now, a household member had been to Philadelphia around that time, so I asked her if she’d bought gas in NJ. Nope. Which makes sense - that would have been quite out of her way.
There was also a charge at a restaurant in Manhattan, a very small charge at a vending machine, and the absolute sure sign it was fraud: a charge at a parking meter in Manhattan. These folks had a nice night on the town! But there’s no way in hell I’d drive into Manhattan just for dinner.
Oh, and they also tried to use the card at a Red Lobster, but for some reason that one was actually declined.
I have to assume they had a physical card, given the types of charges. This was pre-chip, if I remember correctly. No clue where it might have been compromised - we’d used it at a local restaurant some time before this, so that’s my best guess.
Got that. I plan to put the one with the problem in the safe drawer and leave it there for a couple of months until any residual dust settles.
They steal a card for a night on the town in NYC…and they go to Red Lobster???
They have lobster! It’s right there in the name! Duh.
I know, right!!
I actually thought about going to the restaurant they actually did eat at, next time we visited the city, but I’ve only been once or twice since then and never got around to it. Too bad; the place sounded pretty nice and not too insanely expensive.
Well, Momofuku Ko* doesn’t serve those cheddar biscuits…
.
*Japanese Kaiseki restaurant, East Village $$$$
I have had a few of these:
Greetings!
I have to share bad news with you. Approximately a few months ago, I gained access to your devices, which you use for internet browsing. After that, I have started tracking your internet activities.
and these:
FebEx®
Shipping confirmation
Dear Bob,
you have a parcel in our custody ready to be delivered we need you to provide us with your correct delivery address
You should have reported them to the Feberal Bureau of Investigation.
Doing some slightly overdue review of one of our credit card accounts (we’ve been a bit distracted), I found the following transactions:
Finishing Touches, March 19, 5.80
Finishing Touches, March 23, 82.45
Elevated Home Interior, April 1, 39.93
Finishing Touches, April 22, 82.45
Elevated Home Interior, May 1, 59.96
Cultivated Gardenings, May 22, 82.45
None of these names rang a bell. And the fact that two different “vendors” had identical purchase amounts isn’t at ALL suspicious, no indeedy.
Clearly the March 19th one was a trial purchase to see if the card worked.
I called the phone numbers associated with all the transactions and got the IDENTICAL recorded message saying “Thank you for calling customer service!”. In one case I waited to speak with a representative, told her I had a charge I was investigating, and wanted to know what company it was. The response was “We are a third party call center assisting a variety of companies; their products are things like dietary supplements and male enhancement products”.
I’m sure these are all LOVELY people, and it’s all on the up and up, right?
Anyway, I called the credit card company; they asked a ton of questions “are you sure it’s not something the other cardholder purchased; do you have the card in your possession” etc. So the card is cancelled, and they will send a new one, and maybe that’ll be the end of it. At least supposedly I’m not on the hook even for the March / early April purchases; since it’s more than 60 days since they were made, legally they could say “too bad”. At which point, we’d make the decision to shred the new card, and close it as soon as the balance is paid off.
But what puzzles me is: If someone got my credit card, wouldn’t they have tried to make more purchases? Or is it likely that the company itself got the credit card info and is hoping the “purchases” go unnoticed for a while? What’s the game here? I know some of the supplement subscription scams wind up being nearly impossible to cancel, but nobody is receiving anything as far as I know.
And it’s not like I’m going to speak to that customer service rep and give them my info so they can look up the account.
My guess is that perhaps they’re trying to make their money from a large number of small purchases, as you suggested, hoping they won’t be noticed. I don’t fully understand the whole credit card scamming operation, as it seems there are different tactics than just trying to accumulate “stuff”.
GAAAAAHHHHHHH! GAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! It’s the scam that keeps on giving! Way back in December, we had fraudulent activity on our checking account. Jumped through all the hoops, filed all the reports, got our money back through the bank insurance. Fast forward to seven month later when we decide to pay our rent out of this account (coincidentally, it’s the first check we’ve written on that account since the problem), and we get a note from the financial person saying that there was a “stop payment” on the check.
So I call these morons at the bank and they tell me that they put a stop payment on the account back in December to protect us from further problems. Okay, makes sense, BUT WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU - YOU KNOW - TELL ME, THE ACCOUNT HOLDER, THAT YOU WERE GOING TO DO THAT!!! You fucking ASSHOLES.
Her suggestion is that we should just open another checking account with them. Now why would I do that? If I’m going to go through all the trouble of notifying all my retirement accounts to send my payments to another account, why would I have them send it to YOU INCOMPETENT FUCKS? This is truly the last straw with this bank. Yeah, I’m going to lose all my travel points, but I just don’t care anymore. I’ve had an account there for 40 years, but it’s time to part ways.
Fucking hell.
I’d do the same thing. I switched banks at one point after I got tired of them regularly fucking things up.
I’ve been with the newer bank for almost 25 years without a single problem so I know I made the right decision.
Are you eligible for any credit unions? I seem to recall you’re retired military so Navy FCU might be an option - of course, if they have no local branches that’s slightly inconvenient, though far less so than it used to be.
I was able to join there about 10 years back, when I was working on a DoD contract. They had a branch literally downstairs in my office building - can’t beat that for convenience. And now, they are literally the closest financial institution to our house. One of these days, we’ll start using them as our primary - maybe when we retire (right now we have all our stuff going into another CU).
CUs may not be as convenient in other parts of the country. Here in the DC area, they are as common as Starbucks (or weed dispensaries in Oregon).
I hear your frustration on the “why didn’t you TELL me!”. A couple of times, I’ve had credit cards frozen due to unusual purchases. A couple of times, it was from an overseas merchant; those purchases went through, but the next one failed. Another time, we were wearing the numbers off the thing due to back-to-school shopping. In all cases, we found out when the card wouldn’t go through at a merchant.
Nowadays, at least, we get a text notification.
If a chargeback happens, do the banks claw the money back from the merchants? (or attempt to; a wily scammer will quickly move money to another account that is not associated to the credit card deposits).
What I suspect the game is with my recent thing is that it’s a subscription “service”. They may actually be sending a product in many cases, but it’s overpriced - and very tough to cancel.
I try not to deal with banks, only credit unions. And this one that’s causing the problems is a CU. We have another one in OR.
Technically, the shitty “bank” I was at was a CU. I left them for a big, national bank and have had no problems since. I’ve had a bad opinion of CUs since then.