WWTBAM Bored

They notified me of approximately $1000 of Fraudulent Charges on my business mastercard! Now I gotta get a new card and sign an affadavit to get the charges removed from my Account! My other personal charge cards don't seem affected at last check. Must be some teeny bopper, lots of Napster charges, a ladies boutique charge of $406 and $208 to Dell Computer (I have a seperate account with Dell and never use the MC for them!).
Oh well, it's not bad enough that the market sucks this year, now I have to watch out for thieves!

Any clue how they got your account number?

dodgersteve182 wrote:They notified me of approximately $1000 of Fraudulent Charges on my business mastercard! Now I gotta get a new card and sign an affadavit to get the charges removed from my Account! My other personal charge cards don't seem affected at last check. Must be some teeny bopper, lots of Napster charges, a ladies boutique charge of $406 and $208 to Dell Computer (I have a seperate account with Dell and never use the MC for them!).
Oh well, it's not bad enough that the market sucks this year, now I have to watch out for thieves!

Have you used your business card at a restaurant lately? I'll bet it was skimmed.

Or car rental counters, those are common places for theft to occur, they have your card for so long and they're writing all kinds of information so you don't even notice them jotting down your card number.

I don't know why we don't go to the system I saw throughout Europe, particularly in the UK - hand card readers. They were used in taxis, restaurants, etc. The card never left the table at the restaurant, they came over, swiped, printed, and handed it back. You'd think someone would suggest that here to reduce fraud. I can't imagine those readers are that much more expensive than the table top ones.

They did the same kind of thing for me around 2003 when I bought something at Walmart in NY and two hours later a $300+ charge surfaced at another WalMart in California. They shut off my card which showed a couple of other pending charges of $1000 or so. It must have been an employee job, since I eventually got a letter that WalMart would be responsible for the charges.

Snaxx

jacorbett70 wrote:They did the same kind of thing for me around 2003 when I bought something at Walmart in NY and two hours later a $300+ charge surfaced at another WalMart in California. They shut off my card which showed a couple of other pending charges of $1000 or so. It must have been an employee job, since I eventually got a letter that WalMart would be responsible for the charges.

Snaxx

No, I'm sure Walmart* was responsible because the one in California didn't check the card properly. What usually happens is that a crook takes a stolen card and puts your magnetic strip information on it. They then present a card that doesn't match your name or card number. If the cashier doesn't check, it's their nickle.

Bob Juch wrote:

dodgersteve182 wrote:They notified me of approximately $1000 of Fraudulent Charges on my business mastercard! Now I gotta get a new card and sign an affadavit to get the charges removed from my Account! My other personal charge cards don't seem affected at last check. Must be some teeny bopper, lots of Napster charges, a ladies boutique charge of $406 and $208 to Dell Computer (I have a seperate account with Dell and never use the MC for them!).
Oh well, it's not bad enough that the market sucks this year, now I have to watch out for thieves!

Have you used your business card at a restaurant lately? I'll bet it was skimmed.

I use the mastercard infrequently but mostly at restaurants and hotels. But last month in NYC I used the AMEX card on everything so this was a bit of a surprise.

A server at a local restaurant was running a scam where she changed the handwritten tip amount on credit card transactions. Eg., changing 3s to 8s or 1s to 4s or 7s -- so a $35 tip became $85, or a $100 (from a large party) became $400.

My normal habit is to leave cash tip if I can, not write the amount on the credit card slip. Now I'm glad I do it that way!

Wnen I was robbed at gunpoint back in the 90's, they took my wallet. I was too shaken up to report the credit cards as being stolen immediately (this happened around midnight) so I planned to call the next morning when I got up. Before I could, one of the cards called me (I don't remember which one) because the kids who took the wallet used the card to charge some beer and junk food at a quickie mart in a part of town I never frequented (about a $15 charge total). I don't remember which card it is.

Later, when I had my business, I used to go to videostores and purchase excess inventory from them and put it on a Capital One card. Seeing a number of purchases from several Blockbuster stores within a few hours of each other triggered an alarm and they called me to make sure it was me making the purchases.