I just was notified that my credit card was used for a fuel purchase of $1.87. (I receive notices whenever a fuel charge occurs.) It wasn’t me or my wife.
I assume some thief is testing to see if they can use my card for bigger purchases.
The rub is whenever I’ve reported scam charges to the credit card company they demand that I get a new credit card since they are the liable ones.
This is a huge PITA as I have many automatic occurring charges.
My question is …would you report it immediately and if so why?
Yes, because it’s the same “replace the card” nuisance whether you do it now or after the miscreants max it out.
And maybe find a different card provider, if this is a common enough occurrence that you regard it as enough of a nuisance that you procrastinate.
Go online to see your purchases. Find out where this charge was made and look at your charges to see if there are others you don’t recognize. Report it and get a new card.
One way to deal with the problem of recurring charges is to have one card that you only use for those kinds of charges. Use one card for your day-to-day purchases at the store, gas station, etc. and another card for bills like the electric bill, cable bill, subscriptions, etc. That way if your day-to-day card gets compromised, you can replace it without having to update all your auto-pay charges.
Another way that this can also be done is through virtual card numbers. Some credit card companies have support for this. In your online account there will be a way to get a virtual credit card number. You can control how long the number is active, how much can be charged to it, etc. You use this virtual number with your auto-pay charges. Then if your actual card gets compromised, it can be replaced without affecting your virtual card numbers.
Definitely, I’d report it. And for the reasons already given. In fact, it’s possible you aren’t covered against further illegal use of your card if you don’t report it as soon as you are aware of its fraudulent usage.
Thanks all. Got it sorted out.
This is why it’s a good idea to have at least 2 credit cards. Compromised cards happen all the time and it’s nice to have a backup card to use when you are in the process of dealing with this type of unauthorized activity and getting a new card.
Since the OP is asking for opinions, rather than asking about some objective thing, i have moved this to IMHO.
I got seriously fed up with this a couple years ago, while on vacation. My debit card got compromised, for the third time in a year. Someone in Peru was charging up multiple amounts for a dollar or two over the course of one afternoon. I immediately cancelled the card, which left me at the beach without my debit card. 
My bank (which, for the record, has the best customer support ever) had me go to the nearest branch and get a temporary card, so I wasn’t totally screwed.
But, the real useful info I got from them was that I could opt out of automatically updating all my auto-pay people with the new card info. Once I got each company’s message that my payment did not go through, I swapped a majority of them out with an auto -draft using my actual checking account number. I have not had my card hacked since. I am convinced that someone I had set up for auto-pay was causing the issue.
And I hope I didn’t just jinx myself!
One of the main reasons I use my CC for automatic bill pay is for the rewards, which in my case is 2% on all purchases. But if that’s not a big deal for you, then the auto draft from your checking account is a good option as well.
The suggestion for getting a credit card strictly for automatic bill pay is a good one. I’ll be looking into doing this forthwith.
Last year I had an AmEx card get compromised. They sent me a new card, but told me that my recurring charges could continue to use the old (compromised) card number, since they were known-valid charges. So, not much hassle on my end. You may want to consider a card from a different bank.
That’s what stood out to me. I know there are differences between countries, but I keep all my standing orders and direct debits on my regular current account. I’m not sure why, but I was warned against using credit cards for regular payments some years ago.
When we were making frequent trips to Florida via I-95, we had 3 cards compromised within short order. We’re pretty sure they were skimmed at gas stations. Thankfully, our credit union offers a credit card monitoring service. It’s set up so that for any charge over $20 or any online purchase at all, I get a text. I know immediately if something’s wrong.
I also learned pretty quickly to keep a list of the accounts paid automatically via card so I knew which ones needed to be changed when some scumbag got our number. But since moving my husband’s parents from there to here, it’s not happened again. Plus we got a separate travel card that’s only used for gas on the road. It has a much lower credit limit, and so far, so good.
I had some suspicious activity on a debit card some time ago and I called my bank (Ally) and got it fixed, the old card canceled and a new card issued.
A year or so later, my (Ally) checking account was wiped out using the old (Ally) account that was supposed to be canceled long ago.
Called my bank (Ally) and got it fixed, all cards canceled, the entire account closed and I found a new and hopefully more careful bank.