Credit Card Induced Stress

No, it's not the size of my credit card bills that is inducing stress. Well, not exactly.

See, we have a strict rule. . . all credit card bills are paid off monthly. They are used for convenience and to collect air miles for trips to Florida and Canada. No carrying a balance, no incurring interest, just pay off the bill.

Now sometimes my groceries seem to run up a big bill, and it's always seemed weird to me to use a credit card to buy groceries anyway, but see paragraph two - they help to accumulate air miles, no interest involved.

So why the stress?

Well, I do all my credit card stuff online, and I had my account set to send an email for a "high transaction alert" for anything over $200. Just in case.

So my "just in case" happened over the weekend. All of a sudden I get an email saying a transaction has posted for $295.44 to TracPhone. Say what???

At first I thought it was a phishing email. You know, someone trying to get me to click on the link and get my information. But no, it was sent to the correct email, and ONLY my email, and the last 4 digits of my credit card were included in the email, and they were correct.

Hmmmm, well, the transaction hadn't posted to my account yet, so I wasn't sure what to think. I sent a secure email to the credit card company from their site, and got back pretty much a canned response.

Today it HAD posted, so I called TracPhone to dispute the charge. I mean, we DO use TracPhone, but NO WAY had I ever spent that kind of money, and certainly not this weekend. Even with MY less than perfect memory, I do believe I'd remember having spent that much on a phone service just a couple days back.

Folks, I spent over an hour trying to get this straightened out, and although they finally did say I'd get a refund on my account sometime today, I have NO idea if that will actually come through.

So I went back onto my credit card online account again, and reset my transaction alert to the lowest possible setting, $20, cause I wanted to keep track of what was going on.

Good thing. In a little while I got another email saying another charge was pending to LETSTALK.COM for $194.93. Okay, I'd never even heard of that company, so I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that was BOGUS, and someone had my credit card information.

I'd went round and round with Tracphone about that very thing. She said someone had to not only have my account number and address, but the security number off the back of my card. She insisted someone had to SEE my card. I couldn't imagine who. I use it at Walmart and Publix, and those places you slide the card through yourself, and the cashier never sees it.

Sooooo, however it was done, it was obvious someone was using my credit card information. Next I called the credit card company to dispute the claims and cancel the card. There went another hour! First she put me on hold to file the disputes, then I had to insist she cancel the credit card, and put on hold again, and by the time she came back on the phone again, another transaction alert had been emailed to me for $848.76 from DELL SM BUSINESS.

If I wasn't steamed before, I sure was then. Cause, that meant . . .
SOMEBODY ELSE IS USING MY FREAKING CREDIT CARD TO BUY A COMPUTER WHEN I CAN'T AFFORD TO BUY A NEW ONE FOR MYSELF!!!!!

Yeah, that bums me all right.

Bottom line - the credit card is canceled. I've filed disputes on the charges that have already posted, and have to wait and see if the rest go ahead and post. If they do, I have to call back and file disputes on those also.

What disturbs me is wondering HOW someone got this info. I mean, come on folks, I'm pretty much a homebody. I use PayPal whenever possible online, and when not, make sure it's a secure connection where they're scrambling your info. In the real world, I haven't been anywhere lately where anyone would have been handling my credit card.

However, looking back at my credit card use, there is a possiblity. I called a florist in Huntsville last week to order a floral arrangement for a funeral, and had to give them my name, address, credit card number and security code. Yep, they had all the info. So did somebody there use it??? A delivery person? Someone went through their trash?

I guess I won't use my credit card over the phone again. What a pain.