Four Thousand Dollars in Australia
by Toby - October 24th, 2009.Filed under: Life. Tagged as: credit, credit card fraud.
I always said I had an amazing bank. Good service, international toll-free numbers. Normally, you can even talk to friendly people on the phone. I guess they’re going to be tested.
Because I don’t use my American bank while I’m in Germany (we have a German bank for that), I was surprised that they sent me a your-credit-card-payment-is-due email. . . since I shouldn’t have a credit card payment. (I’m very proud of being one of those people.) And I was even more surprised to find that my credit card had been used at an OfficeMax in Australia for over four thousand dollars.
You can guess what the conclusion is: somebody got ahold of my credit card information. Don’t ask me how, because it sits in my wallet and doesn’t ever really leave it. . . and it’s not like I use it online or anything where they could get at the numbers.
Hmm.
Well, I called the bank immediately and they were all friendly. The charge was declared fraudulent and should be removed. The fraud analysis department might be contacting me with questions. I hope that “I had a one-month old son in Germany the day the charge was made” will be explanation enough.
You can guess that I’m frustrated.
October 25th, 2009 at 3:07 AM
Wow. That’s crazy. I never knew anyone who’d had there identity stolen before!
October 25th, 2009 at 10:10 AM
Well, I’m glad to be the first. Christine and I are still trying to figure out how my credit card info could have gotten to Australia. . . and, stupidly enough, our best guess is that a website where I have the information stored might have been hacked.
Makes you a little bit nervous about shopping online, doesn’t it?