Reply #52: Point 7 is one of the most important points. [View All]

[Tesha]

> 7/ If someone gains access to your pin and account info they now
> have YOUR money out of your account. With a credit card it is
> still someone else's money.

Point 7 is one of the most important points.

Living in the electronic world, you've got to accept
the fact that sooner or later, someone will gain
fraudulent access to your account, either though a
high-tech hack that grabs your card number off of a
website or a low-tech account like a "skimmer" that
lets some waiter at some restaurant record the
critical details from your card as you pay
your bill.

If this happens with your debit card, you're dead
(financially speaking): your bank account gets
cleaned out and *IF YOU'RE LUCKY*, someday you
might recover your money. But in the meantime,
how do you live? And, BTW, how motivated is your
bank to recover *YOUR* money on your behalf?

If someone skims my credit card, the situation
is much different. They're stealing money from
*MY BANK*, not from me. At the end of the month,
I get the bill, and when it shows that I made
thirty three purchases from the Ukraine, I
simply sign an affadavit saying "not mine".
My bank doesn't make me pay, issues me a new
credit card number, and off we both go. Because
it's *THEIR MONEY* on the line, they're highly
motivated to catcth the bad guys and recover
*THEIR MONEY*.

In fact, it almost never gets to the point of
you getting a bill with bogus charges on it.
Instead, you get a call from your credit card
company that asks you whether you, by any chance,
have been shopping in the Ukraine today. And
when you say "Why no! That's why you were able
to call me at home!", they handle everything.

Right now, credit cards are far better protected
than debit cards, and if you are disciplined
enough to not run a balance, you're *FAR BETTER
OFF* to routinely use a credit card rather than
a debit card.

Tesha