So I use my credit card for everything. Everything. I do always keep a little cash on hand for emergencies but use the credit card because it's protected.
I receive my monthly statement today and it's way higher than I anticipated. I was buying things for the truck this month so it was inflated but I always have a general idea of what the new balance is (I pay it off every month). Turns out that there were two transactions for almost $500 to the same vitamin/supplements retailer. I jumped online to check the current transactions and damned if there weren't three more to the same place adding another ~$500 to the bill!
So I called the bank, then card services to cancel the card and order a new one, then the retailer. The retailer representative wasn't understanding me at first when I told him that I wanted to help his company not lose money and to cancel any orders that were pending with my card. The light bulb finally went off and he found that four of the five had not shipped so he cancelled those and was going to refund my card for the fifth, except that my card is already cancelled so he cannot do that. I will work that out between the bank and them on Monday.
At least I feel like I caught this one a lot sooner than last time (result of the Target card fraud, about $600 worth), but dammit why do I need to keep a daily tab on what the heck is going on with my credit card? I think this is the forth time in three years that my card was compromised. I rechecked my statement and it does not really have any places that stand out for where the card info may have been swiped from. I want to find out who stole it this time as it costs me a lot of time and effort to resolve this crap every time it happens.
SOOOO, to the question. How do you guys and gals protect your card info? I am thinking of calling in orders to any vendor that I can from now on instead of doing things online and I am probably going to move back to cash for daily transactions even though it is kind of a pain in the rear.
I receive my monthly statement today and it's way higher than I anticipated. I was buying things for the truck this month so it was inflated but I always have a general idea of what the new balance is (I pay it off every month). Turns out that there were two transactions for almost $500 to the same vitamin/supplements retailer. I jumped online to check the current transactions and damned if there weren't three more to the same place adding another ~$500 to the bill!
So I called the bank, then card services to cancel the card and order a new one, then the retailer. The retailer representative wasn't understanding me at first when I told him that I wanted to help his company not lose money and to cancel any orders that were pending with my card. The light bulb finally went off and he found that four of the five had not shipped so he cancelled those and was going to refund my card for the fifth, except that my card is already cancelled so he cannot do that. I will work that out between the bank and them on Monday.
At least I feel like I caught this one a lot sooner than last time (result of the Target card fraud, about $600 worth), but dammit why do I need to keep a daily tab on what the heck is going on with my credit card? I think this is the forth time in three years that my card was compromised. I rechecked my statement and it does not really have any places that stand out for where the card info may have been swiped from. I want to find out who stole it this time as it costs me a lot of time and effort to resolve this crap every time it happens.
SOOOO, to the question. How do you guys and gals protect your card info? I am thinking of calling in orders to any vendor that I can from now on instead of doing things online and I am probably going to move back to cash for daily transactions even though it is kind of a pain in the rear.
