Here’s just a fun little side story for the day. I woke up this morning to a phone call from a Capital One credit card rep. Now, I know how much everyone loves hearing from credit card companies and banks, especially since most of the time they are calling to offer your wonderful whizzy-bang deals and all that. So you can guess my excitement at hearing who was on the other end.
Here’s where it gets fun though. Apparently this was the fraud-detection side of the company. Seems that several odd charges were put to my card yesterday to the tune of several thousand dollars, including 700$ at Macy’s, and a couple hundred at Skechers. I’m sitting here listening to them rattling off a list of charges while staring at the card I’m holding in my hand. Fortunately, to avoid being many bucks into bust, all I have to do is sign an affidavit claiming I made no such charges. I mean, I did get a piece of pizza for lunch…but that was 3$! Methinks someone did a little bit o’ Christmas shopping at my expense. I do wonder what would’ve happened if they had put several hundred dollars down at Barnes and Noble. That might not have looked all that unusual.
Anyways, I am very happy that they caught this and didn’t actually process the payments. I don’t quite know how it works for every credit card company, but some I know require you to actually call them and specifically activate the fraud-watch over your account to keep an eye out for aberrant purchases. I started this up when I went to Italy last February, and I guess it has just been running in the background ever since. So if you haven’t done that for your account, take a little lesson from the guy whose 3$ slice of pizza turned into 700$ at Macy’s.
I see that smile.
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