Saturday, December 05, 2009

The woes of having a credit card

I just went to review my credit card charges (which I do about once a week). I discovered that nearly $1000 had been charged to my card last weekend in another part of the country.

On Tuesday, I did get a call from a merchant I had purchased something through saying that she couldn't get my credit card to go through. I gave her another form of payment and then called the card company. The idiot I reached at the other end of the phone said that they had locked my account because a charge from Amazon had come in with the incorrect CID #. I told him that was ridiculous, so he unlocked the account. Apparently, the card company had locked the account based on the odd charges from the west coast. But, he could not discern that or communicate that to me.

I was ticked at the time because the reasoning seemed moronic. Plus, when I'd first gotten the card last year they had locked the account with the first purchase I tried to make with it (my iMac). In both instances (last year and this week) the company did not attempt to contact me. I had to call them to ask why the charges weren't going through.

So, now I have to wait two weeks to get my new card. Thirteen months ago I didn't even have a credit card. I was paying for everything with my check card. Now I have two credit cards. The one that was compromised is the one that I use for everything, including recurring bills. The other one I barely use, mostly for car related expenses. Fortunately, I've done most of my holiday shopping already.

What a frustrating situation.

1 comment:

JP Burke said...

Ridiculous. This is happening more and more often.

It's not very effective security if they don't tell the cardholder why they're locking the account.