So I got a phone call from a woman named Terry at Coach.com this morning. She wanted to discuss my recent online purchase of $442. Um. First of all, I have never heard of Coach.com (yes, I know I am fashion-hopeless), and secondly, I most certainly did NOT purchase anything from them!
Apparently, someone somehow got my credit card number and had a little fun yesterday - they stopped at iTunes, Microsoft.com, and finally at Coach.com. The fraud division at Coach was tipped off by the fact that the telephone number given on the order was not the same as the number associated with my credit card. And the order was supposed to be shipped to Miami, FL. Yikes.
So I called and reported the theft to my card issuer, and they've canceled the card and will send me a new one tonight. They'll credit me for the fraudulent charges, and hopefully go after the dorks in Miami who tried to buy expensive handbags.
BTW - I am very glad that I use a credit card and NOT a debit card tied to my bank account when shopping online. Because with a debit card, you don't have the same fraud protection - the criminal could very well empty your entire checking account before you find out it's happened. Just a little FYI there.
Have you ever had your credit card numbers stolen online? How safe do you feel banking/buying things online?
YIKKES!!! That is really scary!!!
ReplyDeleteI use my credit card to buy everthing, and quite a bunch is online. I do not pay my bills online. But I go to my accounts, bank and credit card to survey things. No, I have never had that happen. I think you are luky that Coach was awake and they called you!
ReplyDeleteI'm surprized that, with some of my boat spending, Some one has ot called me to check if it was OK.
I'm so glad you got it staightened out in such short notice.
I've had it happen once and it's not really scary when you think about this: you aren't liable for a penny. The credit card company has to remove any fraudulent charges from your bill. When you hear about all a credit card company is doing to prevent you from fraud, that's just hype. The truth is they are doing it to protect themselves. When it happened to me the credit card company was the first to notice and they immediately froze the account.
ReplyDeleteIdentity theft is scary. Someone swiping my credit card number is inconvenient at most. I have to confirm which charges aren't legit and wait for a new card to be able to use the account. That's it.
I have never had this happen but whenever I am Christmas shopping they always freeze my account thinking it has been stolen. Now I am not a big shopper at christmas even but it never fails, I get up to the register and my card won't work...embarassing! So I have to call my bank and get them to un-freeze it for my $30 purchase. As for emptying out my bank account, your right! It would be sad if they got that last 20 bucks.
ReplyDeleteMy credit card was stolen and I did not even notice. The credit card company called me and asked why I was all of a sudden buying nice clothes (Abercrobe and Finch). I assured them we were still wearing Target clearence items and they took off all the expensive clothes.
ReplyDeleteThe mom of one of the theives made her return the clothes and bring me the money and appoligize. What a great Mom!! The credit card company did not have a procedure to accept the money back, since that never happens, but a supervisor told me to send it in and they would handle it.
Kris