My Discover card is now a coaster.

[trof]

Friday I got a call.

"Mr. trof? This is Jim Smith with the Discover card fraud division. We show some unusual activity in your account."
"Who?"
"Jim Smith. I'm with the fraud division of Discover card."
(Me VERY skeptical) "Unh hunh."
"We show some unusual activity in your account and need to ask you a few questions."
(Me really WAY skeptical...SCAM...SCAM...SCAM!!!)
"Give me your number and I'll call you back."
"Sure, it's XXX/XXX-XXXX."

No fool me, I call the customer service number on my card.
Told 'em about the call I'd just received and gave them the number.
"Yes, sir. That's the number of our fraud division."
They connected me.

What I learned:
Someone has a counterfeit card with my number.
Discover has software that alerts the fraud guys to 'unusual' buying patterns.
That morning, someone had charged $60 worth of merchandise 3 times at a Walmart or Sam's Club (They only get a corporate address initially. Later they can get a location.) at 10:02, 10:03, and 10:05.
Very unusual indeed.

So now my account is canceled, I'll get a new card in a couple of days.
YEA Discover!!!

And then I had to call the accounts we pay monthly, automatically, with Discover and give them the news.
Bother.
:-(

[NMDemDist2]

1. USAA did that for us on our Visa card

I still get HP catalogs cuz of the thieves

:rofl:

[Gormy Cuss]

2. Discover seems to have a decent fraud detecting algorithm

We had a similar experience a few years back. In our case, someone tried to buy thousands of dollars worth of furniture about 100 miles away from us -- not our shopping pattern! We're convinced it was an inside job at the wholly unrelated store where we used the card earlier in the day.

[trof]

4. Miz t. suspects a restaurant we went to for the first time.

It was a few days ago and I gave the card to the waiter.
He was gone for a long time.
Who knows?

[Left Is Write]

3. The same thing happened with our Visa card.

Fraud caught it right away, and we got a new card and number.

[LynneSin]

5. A liberal shopping at Wal-Mart - should be an automatic fraud alert

:hide:

[trof]

7. Good point.

[Beausoir]

6. I got that phone call, too. Some poor guy got my number and was dialing porn.

He moved into an apartment I had vacated and got my number off a piece of junk mail.

Discover phoned me and very discreetly asked me if I was doing dial-porn. They got the local police involved and tracked the guy down at his job at the supermarket. Poor guy was scared to death. What a numbskull.

[trof]

8. Ooooooooooooooooooo....

[Beausoir]

13. Well, Trof, unless you are a bakery worker at a super market in Grand Forks, North Dakota...

I don't think it was you.

But....with all the aliases you travel under...who knows?

[Skittles]

16. what do you mean, "poor guy" ?

that is f***ing criminal activity that could potentially screw with your credit rating

[Beausoir]

20. I mean...his reaction to being busted, at work, by the police and his begging and crying

for them to not tell his wife...was really pathetic.

He was a stupid idiot.

[lligrd]

9. Wells Fargo Called Us When My Son

made an online purchase at a gaming site. We were okay with the purchase but I appreciated their concern.

[Mrs.Matcom]

10. That is one of my daily jobs...

the Bank I work for has Visa debit cards. We use their software that tracks our customer's purchases that are not in sync with their usual spending habits, it is a neural network, and it is pretty cool! Do you know how many times I have had to call a first time 'user' for a 'naughty' site?? Luckily, the vendors have somewhat innocuous names so I just ask if they made a purchase at such n such...nothing to embarrass them...if they only knew I googled the company's name before I called them! BWHAHahahahaha!!!! I love my job! :D

[lligrd]

11. As Long As You Aren't Sharing It With Bush And Company

Let them find the sites on their own.

[Mrs.Matcom]

12. I don't share anything with anyone

but the customer...I agree he can find it on his own...therefore, I don't find I need to worry! That man can't find his own head! :rofl:

[trof]

18. Hee. That's funny.

Takes a lot of 'tact' I guess.

[noamnety]

14. I had a similar event with discover.

Got a new card issued after a fraud thing.

Never thought about it again - until about a year or so later. I was refinancing a house, and got turned down for bad credit. The Discover Bastards, as I now call them, canceled the old card, but never deleted the fraud charges off that account - and never sent me a bill for it.

When I didn't pay for the charges I never made that they never billed me for, they reported me to a collection agency. That took almost a year to clear up, after many many phone calls with reps who "promised" they'd call me right back, they'd take care of it, and so forth. It finally took a complaint with the better business bureau to get it fixed.

I won't ever have a discover card again.

My point here is that you need to follow up with the closed account, make sure it's not only closed, but that you don't owe on it.

[trof]

19. Wow! THANKS!

I'll add that to my list.
Appreciate the heads up.

[liberaltrucker]

15. So's my VISA

CC's are persona non gratta in our house!
Cash rules!

:)

[billyskank]

17. Somebody did that to me at the beginning of the year

But the credit card company were really cool about it. They just asked me which of the transactions were mine, refunded all the ones that weren't, and gave me a new card. No biggie.

I didn't have any standing orders on my credit card, which probably made things easier.

[Kali]

21. this is easily avoidable

if you just keep your cards maxed out and have shitty credit to begin with - git with the program, trof :rofl:

(I pity the fool that would do this to me)

[Omphaloskepsis]

22. This is my method for avoiding identity theft.

My credit is so bad I can't even rent an apartment. Please steal my identity, maybe they will start calling you every morning.