bluntmoney.com

I had to place a fraud alert on my credit card the other day because it appears that my account number was somehow compromised. Someone in New York (thousands of miles from my home) charged about $90 worth of something at a gas station. I have no idea how, since the card has always been in my possession. I’ve never even been to the city that the charge took place in, ever.

I called up the credit card company and they were very helpful. They initiated a fraud investigation on the charges. They also sent me out a temporary card via UPS, and the actual replacement card should be here soon. I am a little concerned because I have several auto-charges set up on that card, but the credit card company has told me that those charges should transfer automatically to the replacement card. I’ll just feel more comfortable double-checking that the transfer has actually taken place.

It’s kind of freaky that someone in New York could randomly use my credit card number, but I’m glad I caught the fraudulent charge early. (Mostly because I am paranoid.) Or, maybe I’m not just paranoid.

A couple of years ago I had a (large!) unauthorized charge go through on a debit card that took a long time to straighten out. That one I only found out about because it was sent to collections and I received nasty calls about it. (It was paid out on a closed checking account. Not surprisingly, I didn’t have any money in my closed checking account, but the bank let the unauthorized charge go through anyway, then tried to collect the money from me.) So ever since then I usually check my bank account balances once a day, and my credit card charges once a week or so.

Yet another argument for always making sure that your charges & accounts are accurate and up-to-date…