monophoto
Member
OK - it's happened again. Someone attempted to charge something (membership in a dating service) against my credit card. Unfortunately, that's all too easy to do - it doesn't take a rocket scientist to cobble together a phony credit card number, and if that number happens to coincide with your actual credit, then it's your turn to deal with the hassle.
The credit card company recognized that the charges were fraudulent almost instantly, and immediately put a hold on my credit card. The fact that it happened to occur on the day my wife and I were traveling across the country was purely coincidental, and only added to the fun. But one phone call later the problem had been resolved - the old card restricted to use only in my my local area for two more days and then fully cancelled, and a new card in the mail.
But then comes the real hassle - updating all those on-line merchant accounts and automatically recurring charges. I keep a list of the accounts that have to be updated because this kind of thing seems to happen frequently - the last time before today was at the end of December. But the problem is that every one of them buries the credit card information deeply that it takes an extensive search to even find it, and every one of them has a different process for updating the stored information. Seems to me that a common sense solution here would be a uniform process followed by all web site developers that is designed to make it easy for consumers to deal with this recurring issue.
The credit card company recognized that the charges were fraudulent almost instantly, and immediately put a hold on my credit card. The fact that it happened to occur on the day my wife and I were traveling across the country was purely coincidental, and only added to the fun. But one phone call later the problem had been resolved - the old card restricted to use only in my my local area for two more days and then fully cancelled, and a new card in the mail.
But then comes the real hassle - updating all those on-line merchant accounts and automatically recurring charges. I keep a list of the accounts that have to be updated because this kind of thing seems to happen frequently - the last time before today was at the end of December. But the problem is that every one of them buries the credit card information deeply that it takes an extensive search to even find it, and every one of them has a different process for updating the stored information. Seems to me that a common sense solution here would be a uniform process followed by all web site developers that is designed to make it easy for consumers to deal with this recurring issue.