Community Chat

[DJs mom]

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@PickyPicky3 wrote:

****Now I'm thinking, maybe it's a business. Perhaps my thief charges $50 to pay your cable bill. Or perhaps takes your gun and in return pays your cable bill.

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@PickyPicky3 you are correct. Thieves charge a small fee and will pay your cable bill with stolen credit card numbers.

[PickyPicky3]

@DJs mom  Thanks for the confirmation. Of course, I imagine MY thief runs an upscale operation, giving customers a latte while they wait, and justifying a high transaction fee. 

[SoX]

It's not just credit card fraud.   A few months ago we received one bank statement with an $8,980 charge.  A check written to the city for  a $55 water bill was changed to the above amount, made payable to an unknown person.  Somewhere between the post office and the city's finance department the check was stolen and altered.

Of course our account was credited, but it took weeks of investigation, filing forms, changing bank accounts, etc.  The bank never did tell us who the perp was.

[tansy]

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@SoX wrote:

It's not just credit card fraud.   A few months ago we received one bank statement with an $8,980 charge.  A check written to the city for  a $55 water bill was changed to the above amount, made payable to an unknown person.  Somewhere between the post office and the city's finance department the check was stolen and altered.

Of course our account was credited, but it took weeks of investigation, filing forms, changing bank accounts, etc.  The bank never did tell us who the perp was.

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That's terrible, @SoX.  I don't send checks by mail anymore.  

[Bri369]

I check our accounts daily, often twice a day.  I get an alert every time a charge is made.  Often, they will make small charges to see if the card is active before proceeding with a large charge.  

Every bill is paid electronically now.  I can instantly see everything and no longer have to wait for a bank statement or a check to clear.  

[SoX]

@tansy 

We normally don't send checks by mail, either, but the city doesn't have electronic billing.   What we have done, now, is to have the bank send the check.  Bet this won't happen to us again.

[Bri369]

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@SoX wrote:

@tansy 

We normally don't send checks by mail, either, but the city doesn't have electronic billing.   What we have done, now, is to have the bank send the check.  Bet this won't happen to us again.

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@SoX 

I'm sorry that happened to you.  

[drizzellla]

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@SoX wrote:

@tansy 

We normally don't send checks by mail, either, but the city doesn't have electronic billing.   What we have done, now, is to have the bank send the check.  Bet this won't happen to us again.

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@SoX Hope you are right. Just wanted to add, where I used to work we had many checks that were altered. The payee was changed and the amount was changed. The Police and the DA found out that it was an employee in the bank that was changing checks to her friends and changing the amounts.

[kate2357]

@Sage04 wrote:

Also remember if you are travelling to notify your Bank. Even thought the USVI (St.Thomas, St. Croix and St.John) are part of the USA you still have to notify  your Bank and also any area of the world.

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OMG .... I didn't know to do this and years ago when I got to Guam the hotel said I didn't have a room because my credit card was denied. With the time change between Guam and US, I had to ask a coworker to use his card to get me a room. The hotel was nice enough to accept it and give me the lower price I thought I booked. When I finally got ahold of the CC they yelled at ME for not telling THEM I was going overseas. It wasn't my first trip overseas, but it was my first time using the company CC. Before I had used my own AMEX CC. Needless to say, now whenever we are going anywhere different, we advise the CC. 

RE CC scams, I had a phishing email regarding my Amazon account and would I please click this link to take me to Amazon CS to renter my CC information. The email looked legit, but the email address was a phony one. I also knew there wasn't an issue w/ my CC at Amazon because I had used it just before looking at the bogus email. I did notify Amazon ... but what a pita. Not everyone who gets an email like that is going to look at the return email address an recognize it for a scam.

Like many of you, I look at my banking information daily because of the horror stories I have heard from other people.

[songbird]

Always check my charges (and pre authorization) on my computer credit card everyday.  I also check my bank balance  daily on the computer.  I still get paper statements, but I shred those after looking at them.  Years ago, I got a $1,800.00 charge.  It took nearly a month, but they did investigate and they still don't know how it happen.  I didn't have an account with that company. But I finally received a letter from my bank stating the matter was closed.They credited me back