My wife just a call from our bank with that message. They apparently caught it immediately because she had never gambled before. But there’s always a first time, right. Anyway, they cancelled the charge, voided the card immediately and will send her a new one. So credit companies actually have some smarts.
They keep an eye out for patterns and will call you if things look out of the ordinary.
My favorite example of this was when I was Treasurer of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. We had a credit card, which was used mostly by our executive director in Maryland for things like office supplies, postage, etc. This went on for months.
Then it was time for the Nebula Awards in May. Suddenly there were big charges for hotel rooms, banquets, etc. in Philadelphia.
I got a call that weekend from the credit card company asking about the charges. They clearly didn’t fit the pattern, and were for considerably larger sums than usual, so it tripped all sorts of alarms.
Heh - at least they called in both of these cases.
We had purchases at some unusual sites (ordered books from an out-of-the-US vendor, to send to a friend in Australia) and the bank simply put a hold on the account.
Which we learned about when a local purchase was declined.
Then they did it again a few months later.
We canceled that card after that. I mean, I appreciate that they were on the lookout but they should have tried to contact us to let us know. Laziness, is the only thing I can think of.
I think it was a different bank that once put a hold on my charge card because we’d had about 8 transactions in a single day. All at local businesses, none for unusual amounts, all were places we’d shopped before… and it was Labor Day weekend and most of the places were “back-to-school-shopping” type places… but somehow this alarmed them. Again, no call.
I had my credit card issuer catch someone using my card a couple of months ago. I’m pleased with that.
But, one time I was at the register in a big box store, and the cc company required the store to call them, put me on the line, started grilling me about my purchase history and wanted to verify my identity. While I was standing at the register. Really? I should be giving you my password and social security number while in line? Can you wait a minute so all the other shoppers can get out a pen and paper?
Can you all think about just what it is you are asking me to do?
I hope that this is just a mindless error and that you know that you should never even be asked for your password or PIN, right?
My credit card company requires that I tell them my password when I call them.
The fraud flagging can be inconsistent but it is a nice service.
I usually call them in advance if I will be out of the country since I don’t check my voice mail at home. Then I don’t run into problems. But last year I forgot before we left for Madrid. I used my card all over the place and didn’t hear a peep from them. Of course last month when we were in LA, my card stopped working. After it was turned down for a small purchase at a grocery, I realized what had happened, called them and cleared it up.
I actually assumed that he meant PIN, as in debit card. I’ve never needed a password for a credit card.
They ask me my security question password from their website.
Nope, I meant password as in - is this really your account. It’s not for purchases, it’s the password I use to access my account info online.
My credit card company won’t ever ask for my password and will not ever tell me my password. I am verified by my drivers license number.
I got a letter with a new VISA card enclosed the other day. It said my credit card had been breached by a local store. So I go to use my new VISA and my password does not work. I call my credit card company and the only way they can tell me my pin is to mail me one? They said they mailed it separately but I must have thrown it out as it was in a plain white junk mail type envelope. So I have to wait a week to use it again. Good thing I’m not on vacation!
Don’t ever give anyone your pin number ever. Online they should never ask for more then the card number and expiration date and once in a while the 3 digits on the back.
They do this in their own interest as much as it benefits you. Almost all major card companies provide fraud protection, which puts them on the hook for the fraudulent charges. I’m sure their insurance covers some or all of the cost for them, but it’s definitely as much a self-interest as it is a nice service to provide customers.
I got a few frantic phone calls from my credit unions fraud department one morning. Apparently someone had made a copy of my debit card while out eating the night before and proceeded to withdraw $1200 from my account at various ATMs throughout the night. It was nerve wracking, but I gave them all the info they asked for. It made it easy to track them down because I had just received a new card due to losing my old one.
A number of years back there had been a possible security problem with my Discover Card, but it was resolved without having to change the account number or have a new card issued. However, Discover did set up a security password which I now need to provide before they will discuss my account over the phone. This password is not the same as the security question or password set up for online access. I almost had a problem with this once because later, after not having had to deal with Discover over the phone in a while, I couldn’t remember exactly what password I had given them.
Chase will put holds on your account at random.
I had to charge a bunch of stuff and I charged about $600.00 one day then the next I went to pay for a $50.00 purchase and it was declined. I called and they said, it was do to too high an amount being charged.
Then she pointed out to me that if I plan to charge over a few hundred dollars I should phone Chase’s automated line to notify them of large purchases or it’d happen again.
I had this experience a lot before switching banks for my business. We design consumer electronics so occasionally - once ever couple months - we buy a competing or even just related product from Amazon. These are consumer electronics, mind you, not a business electronic device like a paper shredder.
Like any business, we also buy a lot of office supplies or make payments to FedEx or the post office. In all the times they blocked our purchases, they never once raised an eyebrow at us spending hundreds of dollars on consumer electronics with a business credit card, but would routinely block office supply purchases at Staples or to FedEx or USPS.
They’d say, “Our system flagged this purchase as unusual”. Really? Apparently they didn`t see a lot of businesses buying paper and toner cartridges or shipping packages. I hate arguing with customer support people when they obviously didn’t create the system but it was so frustrating that I couldn’t get even one person to say something like, “You know, you’re right. It is pretty ridiculous that we only block routine business purchases as potentially fraudulent”.
Not long ago, I was at a doctor’s office. I paid a bill with my debit card. I think it was $150.00. When I left, I wasn’t able to get out of the parking lot because my card had been flagged. The parking attendant said I would have to leave the car until I could come back with the money. Luckily, I dug around in my purse and found the $12 to pay for parking.
When I got home there was a voice mail from the bank saying someone had tried to withdraw $150,000.00 from my account. It was the twit at the doctor’s office. She entered that amount by mistake, but didn’t tell me. The odd thing was she ran it a second time, an hour after I left for the correct amount. The bank let that one go through, but not the parking lot. :dubious:
My business card has one of the more useless variants on this I’ve experienced. Mostly I buy small amounts of spare parts and computer supplies on it, but last month I had an emergency where I had to charge two servers for immediate shipping.
The response was that I got a letter in physical mail two weeks later, saying essentially: “Please call and verify that you actually intended to spend this unusual $8000 last month, or we may put a hold on your card at some point”.
Way to prevent that thief from charging thousands of dollars for a month.
Bruce Schneier writes regularly about security, and he points out that security is both a feeling, and a risk, and it’s important to realize that things that feel safe aren’t always actually safe, and so on. I think this is the sort of thing that seems dangerous, but is actually quite safe.
Do you think potential fraudsters go to department stores and wait in line in the hopes that they’ll overhear enough of a partial conversation with a credit card company that they’ll be able to make some fraudulent charges? You are far far far more likely to be the victim of fraud due to, say, the guy behind the register who you’re happily handing your card to and could easily run it through a skimmer while swiping it, or someone in the back office of an insurance company pulling millions of records on a USB stick, or a misconfigured web server, or the fact that the call center is outsourced to prisons.
I’d be quite surprised if there were more than a dozen people in the last decade who could reasonably assert that they were the victims of fraud do to speaking certain semi-sensitive information over the phone in a store.
I was very impressed with MC’s card services.
A few years ago, I took my car into my mechanic for a repair. The mechanic works at a large chain gas station with a Mini-Mart.
The guy gave me a bill of 393 dollars and sent me in to the Mini-Mart to pay it. The cashier at the mart ran my card for 3 dollars and 93 cents. I pointed out the error to the guy and he had trouble figuring out how to resolve it. Apparently, he couldn’t cancel the small charge. He also couldn’t subtract 3.93 from 393. So he gave me the $3.93 from the register and ran a new charge for $393.00.
MC picked up on the 2 back to back charges and the amounts and suspected fraud. While I didn’t find out until I went to use the card again, this wasn’t their fault because I later discovered they had left me a voicemail which I had skipped over thinking it was a solictation.