Tag: Credit card

Don’t Lose Your Credit Card In Las Vegas!

Sometime during lunch Helaine dropped her credit card. She didn’t know it was missing until she got a text from Chase.

While she was reading the text I was looking at an email. Chase was pulling out all the stops. They wanted answers. They were in a hurry!

Hello Mr Geoff Fox, please respond immediately

Action required Please confirm activity geoff.fox gmail.com Gmail

Are you kidding? $3121.50! They didn’t want to turn down a legit purchase this size. My call really was important to them.

I can’t be sure, but the initials GCA appear on the fraud notice and the ATM’s at the hotel we were visiting. It’s likely whomever found the card tried to get $3,000 (plus fees) in cash.

Why? Because Las Vegas!

Diogenes wouldn’t have liked it here.

By the time Helaine got Chase on the phone more purchases had been denied. In one store the crooks were asked for ID, then said they didn’t have it with them.

There was a time merchants would be told to hold onto the card. They don’t that anymore. Too dangerous in the 21st Century.

The bank has limited their exposure by freezing the account. Chase 1 Crooks 0.

Meanwhile, the Foxes are minus the card while away from home. And, of course, we will have to inform everyone AGAIN!!!

Yippee.

A New Credit Card… Again

A New Card Is On The Way GmailExcuse us while Helaine and I pull all our hair out by the roots one strand at a time!

Our Southwest Airlines credit card is being replaced, again. The new card gets a new number. EVERYONE we do business with on a regular basis must be told.

Maybe you remember the last time this happened? We were driving from Connecticut to California. We were in Lincoln, Nebraska when we got the call.

I’ve lost count how many times this has happened, but at least five. We expect Chase not to extend the expiration date, so this will have to be done again in about a year. Make it at least six times.

What we’ve learned through all this is EVERY website puts credit card number changes in a different place. Each requires different hoops be jumped through and that you understand their particular style of business English. Some changes will take seconds, others will follow long minutes of head scratching.

Part of the reason this stings so much is because each-and-every time this has happened it’s been because of how Chase (and other American banks) issue cards.

It’s my understanding the “Target Caper” couldn’t have happened in Europe or Asia. There, credit card issuers have spent a little money to improve security. Here in the states, their security ends up being part of my job!

Not happy.

As The Credit Card Turns

As pains in the ass go this isn’t the worst, but it’s certainly a pain! No two sites do it the same. Some seem to go out of their way to keep you from figuring out what to do.

Our credit card is expiring. Today was my day to change information on accounts I use. Helaine had already done hers.

As pains in the ass go this isn’t the worst, but it’s certainly a pain! No two sites do it the same. Some seem to go out of their way to keep you from figuring out what to do. Google is the worst offender!

Why am I sending money to Google? I buy extra space for my email and Picasa accounts. Also, Google sells some apps for my Android devices.

Let me save you the trouble should you have a Google payment to make. It’s called Google Wallet! Oh yeah, I remember now. Unfortunately, as far as I can see there are no links to the mysterious wallet from the pages I deal with.

Runner-up winner for the most difficult site is E-ZPass New York. They’re a winner from previous years.

Since it’s E-ZPass you’d think they’d own E-ZPass.com. Nope. On top of that the non-hyphenated EZPass.com goes to the New Jersey entity–where my account isn’t!

In any event it’s done until we’ve get the first email from a bounced payment. You know we’ve missed something.

This Should Work… But It Doesn’t

You know that line they sent me, “You can use your card with confidence?” No, you can’t.

It was the perfect setup for a Sunday afternoon. Helaine was out shopping. I was taking a nap. Foolishly I’d left the sound up on my cellphone. That’s how Chase woke me with a text.

I had no idea if Helaine had attempted a $121.17 charge at a variety store so I called her.

Yup, it was her purchase. It was blocked.

I texted back a confirming “1” and told Helaine to try again.

Refused!

You know that line they sent me, “You can use your card with confidence?” No, you can’t.

With Helaine in one ear I made the international circuit of customer service operators finally ending up with ‘no accent’ Karl. Whether Karl fixed the problem or it fixed itself I’ll never know, but the $121.17 charge did finally go through.

This is not my first time to the fraud prevention rodeo. Most of the time it’s a false positive on Chase’s part, as it was today. Each time I say there must be a better way. There probably is, but my time is free to Chase. They have little incentive to make my life easier.

The Times Should Have Come To Me

My hypothesis was you don’t go after spam by filtering email. You go after spam by stopping credit card transactions.

February 6, 2004 I wrote a blog post about spam. My hypothesis was you don’t go after spam by filtering email. You go after spam by stopping credit card transactions!

It seemed reasonable at the time though as you’ve probably noticed spam continues and is still supported by credit card purchases!

Flash forward seven and a half years. Today’s New York Times carries this headline: Study Sees Way to Win Spam Fight. Guess what scientists have found?

It turned out that 95 percent of the credit card transactions for the spam-advertised drugs and herbal remedies they bought were handled by just three financial companies — one based in Azerbaijan, one in Denmark and one in Nevis, in the West Indies.

The researchers looked at nearly a billion messages and spent several thousand dollars on about 120 purchases. No single purchase was more than $277.

If a handful of companies like these refused to authorize online credit card payments to the merchants, “you’d cut off the money that supports the entire spam enterprise,” said one of the scientists, Stefan Savage of the University of California, San Diego, who worked with colleagues at San Diego and Berkeley and at the International Computer Science Institute.

It makes you wonder, do the credit card companies really want to stop this? If they wanted to they could.

The “Is This Your Charge?” Cleanse

I suspect some might actually watch their website so they can laugh as you stumble through their minefield.

E-ZPass I’m talking to you!

“That’s all of them… unless we find more.” Helaine’s words. The occasion was our forced march through the list of companies that bill us via our credit card. After Friday’s cut off of credit and Saturday’s delivery of new cards this should be the last step in getting back to normal.

No two companies let you change your info the same way. Most make you search hard before finding how the change is made.

I suspect some might actually watch their website so they can laugh as you stumble through their minefield.

E-ZPass I’m talking to you!

My E-ZPass account number begins with “00000000”. That’s eight zeros. I know that because it’s on my online statements.

The best way to enter a number like that correctly is cut and paste it. I did. It’s an invalid number.

Yup, the account number E-ZPass lists isn’t the one it accepts! In order to log in I had to strip the eight zeros.

Thanks E-ZPass. You’re a joke a minute.

I’m sure sometime over the next few months we’ll go to use an account and realize it’s still wrong or more likely hear from a company whose payment was denied because they’ve got the old number. Whoever it was who originally tried to charge on our account has created the gift that keeps on giving.

The “Is This Your Charge?” Call

Good or bad our credit card company gets a lot of info from our purchases. We use one card for everything. They know a lot about the Foxes.

I was asleep when Helaine answered the call from Chase. They’d just gotten a $2,000 charge from an overseas website. It didn’t fit our spending pattern and had been declined, but Chase wanted to make sure.

Make no mistake, Chase is protecting Chase. Any benefit to me comes when our interests are coincidentally aligned. I believe “your call is important to us,” is about as much commitment as they want.

Good or bad our credit card company gets a lot of info from our purchases. We use one card for everything. They know a lot about the Foxes.

At 2:00 PM the card will be shut down. Tomorrow a new card will be delivered. Chase takes a lot of the responsibility. We did nothing wrong, but we’re responsible for some work too. We’ll have to find everyone who regularly bills our card and let them know.

While Helaine was out making the last of our allowed purchases the very nice (I mean very, very nice) American based woman from Chase, Theresa Gonzalez, called. She was checking to see if she could throw the switch? It gave me a chance to ask how they knew.

The online merchant itself was legit. The trigger was the large amount going out-of-country. It didn’t fit our pattern (my words, not hers).

This is a downside in our mobile and connected society. I absolutely feel Chase knows too much. I’m not sure how they could do business otherwise.

The alternative is giving up the convenience our credit card society affords us. I definitely don’t want to do that.