Card fraud - banks be quick
15So, I check our personal banking account this morning. Four charges pending, made yesterday.
Morningsave
Bed Bath and Beyond
Peoplefinders
Amazon
I made the Morningsave and Amazon. Not the other two. Call the bank. Cancel the card. Go through and change five payment things online. Still need to do meh.
Check the peoplefinders website, was this a one time charge or ongoing? Gee, look at that, it’s a trial, but a subscription. Call them. It’s already been cancelled! But we confirm the cancel.
Called Bed Bath and Beyond. The system recognizes my phone number! This number was used when the purchase was made. I talk to a CSR about it. I told him I wanted to cancel the purchase since I didn’t make it. He says “it’s already been cancelled”.
Cool. “Who cancelled it?” One of their other departments.
“What did I buy?”
A vortex heater. I hope someone freezes their ass off.
Boy, the bank was quick getting the word out, though.
Unblame @therealjrn.
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Isn’t it nice to find that you bought stuff but didn’t recall buying the stuff? /s
In all seriousness though, thankfully, even though the things were cancelled, you caught them in time.
Who knows what could have happened down the line if people weren’t keeping watch?
@mflassy I was just wondering about the heater.
So, someone uses a fraudulent card to buy something online. It doesn’t get delivered.
Do they call to find out why they didn’t get it?
@lisaviolet
A few days ago, somebody accessed my Amazon account and tried buying something.
Aside from the fact that they entered their billing/shipping info (unless they used somebody else’s), I’m not sure what they were thinking, especially since Amazon sends a confirmation email, and like you said, the package has to be delivered.
@lisaviolet back in the day “carders” use to have stuff delivered to newly vancant houses and they’d grab the item after delivery.
@Ignorant
Now in some places they just go around taking them from houses when nobody is home.
@mflassy I used to have an account with Dell. I got a robo call from their credit department about a charge made on it. It wasn’t an account I ever used, I think it was something they set up when I bought a computer through them. I paid for it in full at the time. I think the fact that the my city/state were different than the shipping address raised the flag.
I checked my account and there was a shipping address to someplace in the midwest. Yeah, someone didn’t get their toy. I just love being a buzzkill. lol
@lisaviolet
@lisaviolet This time of year, many secrets are enveloping our families. Are you sure hubs or somebody might have not been shopping for gifts?
That being said, I’ve noticed my credit union has developed astonishing speed in shutting down my debit card(s) when weird charges occur. I was on a kick of just using my debit card for everything to stay “cash current” but after getting frozen out on a couple of Fridays–leaving me cashless on a weekend–I’m back to using a rewards credit card(s) and paying it off every month.
@therealjrn You know how it is with debit cards. Each cardholder has a different number. These were made in my name with my card number.
There’s just the two of us here. We’ve been married for thirty-two years in a couple of weeks. We’ve never been big on surprising one another.
I remember when someone emptied one of our accounts of almost $26,000. (His mom had lent him money to buy a tractor.) The bank gave me copies of the withdrawal slips. Not done online, but in person. In North Dakota. (Remember, we’re in San Diego.) My last name was misspelled.
And the guy at the bank asked “are you sure your husband didn’t make the withdrawals?”
Me: Are you fucking serious?
Oh, and we don’t do birthdays or Christmas. We just don’t. I’ll show you our tree.
@lisaviolet Damn…26K? Did they replace the stolen money?
@therealjrn Yes, they did. It took a couple of months, though. After it was all taken care of, I got a call from the FBI in L.A. I faxed all of the information I had up to them.
It was just crazy. One of the withdrawal slips was transferring funds to a state account for child support. Just crazy.
@lisaviolet That does sound crazy, almost like an “inside job” from some bank worker.
@therealjrn Oh, for sure. Withdrawals of over $1000 were supposed to have the approval of the manager. You know, initials. They didn’t.
@therealjrn
This has been our tree for at least the last ten years. A whole four inches tall. I told my husband this morning that I’m thankful I can still put it up by myself.
@lisaviolet Nice!
@lisaviolet
/image your tree is bad and you should feel bad
@medz It’ a beautiful tree and a solid family tradition, so just go back to your corner and think about what you said.
@lisaviolet You’re right. I’m sorry I was so hasty to judge. I took some time to think about it as well as do some internal reflection.
After a great deal of consideration, however, I stand behind my original jab. This was done out of love and in a joking manner. I apologize if I caused any offense as that was not my intent.
/giphy only joking
@medz My tree is not ugly and I don’t feel bad.
Your tree is ugly and you should feel bad.
@lisaviolet Now you’re getting it!
@medz YASSS!
@lisaviolet @medz
@lisaviolet
I will gladly pay you Tuesday for $26,000.00 today.
@lisaviolet I bought 10 of those years ago from Compgeeks on clearance; I think $1.50 each. I use them at work every year, along the top of the cubicle walls. My coworkers are jealous. They cannot match my expression of cool Christmas spirit.
But we have a big tree for home.
Kiss your VMP goodbye. Bwa ha ha!
@medz
Did somebody say @unixrab?
@mflassy @medz
@unixrab
@lisaviolet don’t make me…you know
Back about three years ago I decided to try FreedomPop for a test of cheap phone service. I bought a refurb S3 from them and paid ~$86 for a year of service. Pretty shitty service since they seem to use VOIP on their shitty data lines so I quit the test after about 90 days…
Fast forward to 2017 and all of a sudden $0.01 charges from them start showing up on the credit card account, usually two or three a month. Bastards. I do the charge dispute thing and get refunded no problem. Then it happens again. Then the month after, and now for a fourth month. Fuckers. Always for 1 cent, about every two weeks.
I write Chase asking for them to block those FreedomPop fuckers and I get a canned response from them as if I was just disputing a single charge. grrr.
It’s on my AMZN rewards card and I use it quite a bit but I’m really getting very, very, very irritated at spending my time disputing all the 1 cent charges…
Fuckers.
@therealjrn I’m glad I read this. I get offers from FreedomPop a lot and my interest was piqued. I’ll stay with Cricket.
That’s pretty annoying. If you can still access your account with them, is there a way to change the payment method? Like a digit off in the number?
@lisaviolet That’s a thought, but I haven’t logged in for a couple of years now. I don’t really want to refresh anything with them.
Some people have had good luck with them but since they buy data lines in bulk it is much dependent on your locale as to quality of service.
But if you look around, they get horrible marks for customer service. Not never ever anytime or anywhere again for me. The S3 they sent has been rooted (by them) I so it would use the VOIP thing rather than regular cell phone service so it’s not good for anything either.
@therealjrn I’m happy with Cricket. Coverage is decent since they’re owned by AT&T. Every other month they’ve been giving me another gig of data. Not that I use it since I’m home almost 99.9% of the time and we have high speed cable (over 350MBPS download speed).
Husband has a basic phone, so I use mine to check his email when we’re out and about.
@lisaviolet Cricket is OK, I have some friends that use it. I use VirginMobile which has been very reliable and cheap. It’s OK too.
I don’t know how all those people on contracts and shit afford $200.00 a month for phone service.
@therealjrn
And that’s why the timing was good for Project Fi.
@therealjrn Yeah, we’ve discussed that. Earlier this year I told Brian I wanted a better smartphone. He starts sweating. The one I had was free and wouldn’t load webpages because the memory amount was so low. I’d been looking at phones and had settled on an LG, for around a hundred bucks. I figured it was plenty for what I would be using it for.
When he asked how much and I told him, immediate relief. “I thought you wanted one that was over $500!” Seriously? I thought you knew me better than that, I go cheap as often as possible.
When we were at a movie one night, there was a mom and young (like under four) daughter playing with mom’s phone. Because her kid would break the phone, she said she spent around $300 a month on phone/service. Crazy. Just crazy.
I have cameras. I have video cams. I have a nice component stereo setup. I have computers. I have cable television. I have four Rokus.
I don’t need to spend a lot of tunas on a phone, yanno? Our cricket bill is $60 a month.
@mflassy Wow, I had never heard of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Fi
@lisaviolet My VM service is $35 so I feels ya. I did splurge and have a fancy dancy S8, but it’s mine. lol
@therealjrn Chase? Have fun with Chase. I had the Chase experience from hell. More than once. Didn’t want to cancel the card since it was my oldest one by zillions of years.
@therealjrn I used Net 10 until last year. Owned now by someone else but still operates separately. Never had an issue with customer service either before or after they were bought. $50/mo. Less if I allowed auto charge. I now have smarttalk for $35/mo but only 2 gig data. Don’t care about that as I work where there is internet and have a laptop at home.
@therealjrn Report your Amazon card as lost or stolen. They’ll change your number and send you a new card.
@mflassy @therealjrn Google’s Project Fi has been great for us. My wife’s phone has been through them for two years (work covers mine) and we’ve no complaints at all.
Cell coverage is a mix of Sprint and T-Mobile, and WiFi, and the phone handles switching between them transparently.
But for me, the really big deal is Project Fi doesn’t despise their users and seek ways to inflict pain on them. So pretty much the opposite of traditional carriers.
There are no penalties at all. If you use more data, you pay for exactly what you use, not a huge block of data, just what you used. If you use less than you’ve selected for your monthly plan, they credit it toward next month.
The only (small) downside is you have to use a Project Fi supported phone, so it can handle the network switching.
https://fi.google.com/about/phones/
@mamawoot Yup. I’ve changed the number twice over that last couple of years for different reasons. The merchants apparently can do something to refresh the number on their end. I would have been better off using a throw-away pre-loaded card.
My credit card was fast and shut down my card in less than 24 hours before I even knew there was a problem. First the asshat opened an account to wire money in my name and then stupidly wired it to himself. $800. Then he paid off his verison bill (no they do not respond to court orders to cough up the owner of the phone number). Then $700+ at Lowes, caught on camera.
With all of that my local police wouldn’t investigate because I couldn’t prove the crime happened in my town. WTF?? (this is how my old town kept the crime rate low).
So I called the police line and got all the info I needed from them about the jerk who stole my number (got his name, phone number…). Then asked Lowe’s to pull the video at the check out time of the $700 item. Took all the evidence to the police. The still wouldn’t do anything.
So I started googling the jerk and finally found him. In jail in another county for the same crime. Took that info to the cops and they said since he was already jailed for a similar crime no need to go after him. Again WTF?
In the end the asshole got off scot free because the local cops refused to do anything. I hope karma gets the entire lot of them - cops, criminal… PITA.
@Kidsandliz http://www.lawqa.com/qa/can-cell-phone-records-be-accessed-for-civil-matters
Answered by many lawyers
@cengland0 All they wanted was the name of owner, not anything else so it looks like they could get that based on those responses.
Chase has been OK with me, except that one time I messed up and didn’t pay it off completely and they charged me interest for two months for the same amount.
They denied an attempt to use my card at a Walmart in Georgia before calling me about it. I’ve used the card all over the country, but I guess the fact that I’d used in myself in Kentucky fifteen minutes earlier set off an alarm.