I've BEEN SKIMMED

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jcm71

jcm71

Member
Joined
May 5, 2011
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Location
Chattanooga, TN
When I got home my wife told me that our CC company had called about a questionable charge originating out of Green Bay, WI. Luckily they denied the charge. I called them back and told them that I definitely had not made the charge. Credit card (MC) cancelled. New one on the way. My wife and and I only use MC for gas and other automobile related purchases. My theory is that one of our cards got skimmed at the gas pump. Be careful out there.
 
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You can't win at gas stations. If you do pay-at-the-pump, you risk being skimmed. If you pay inside, you risk the old "cashier swipes the card twice" scam.

Restaurants are another place to watch out. You hand the card to the waitress, she walks off then comes back with the receipt. You don't know what else she did with the card while she had it. Got hit with one of those (the girl helped herself to $50). Luckily, VISA voided the transaction.

Go online to your CC account often, and keep an eye on the charges. It's a bit of a hassle, but you have to be vigilant.
 
Many financial institutions will send you an email for every charge made on your credit card. Mine does and it reminds me to put the amount in my computer program.
 
I got a call on my cell phone once from my bank asking if I was in Romania trying to charge $330 worth of tennis balls on my debit card.

Needless to say, I wasn't and cancelled the card.

Never figured out how the thing got compromised, I had only used it at a WalMart a few times and think maybe it was nabbed by someone in one of the processing centers in India or some such overseas place.
 
I've had it happen twice, both times the day after I had eaten at one particular resturant my wife likes. The first time was $3000 for an airplane ticket to Abu Dhabi and the second time was for $2500 worth of clothing. Since I wasn't able to prove that a server had skimmed the card, I didn't report it to the police. I switched to only paying cash at that resturant until the last time I went there a couple of months ago and found out that some thief had stolen the catalytic converter off of my car parked n the very busy parking lot while we were eating lunch. That I reported to the resturant manager, filed a police report and quit going to that resturant.

Like others, my CC company called me immediately when the charges were attempted and issued me a new card.

Jim Smith
 
I've had my bank card info stolen twice this year. Mine were bank debit cards, but both times the bank re-issued the cards & put the money back. I believe mine were pulled from a gas station, especially since the last card was used almost exclusively at that pump.

Evidently, as most have posted, restaurants and gas pumps are at the top of the list. In restaurants the waiter will photo the card (front & back) and sell the info.
 
Makes me glad I cut up the CC's in 2008 and went back to cash for most my transactions. But I do still use the Debit card at the pump and to buy all those wonderful pen parts, so the risk is still there. But so long as they're run as credit transactions the M/C and/or Visa still offer the same protections as they do for CC's in case of fraudulent use. Thankfully I've only been through the experience once, and that was a decade ago now. You just can't be too careful these days, because there's so much technology out there that makes it easy for the bad guys to rip you off.
 
My daughter had her MC card skimmed at a gas station in Iowa. Now we always tug on the credit card device at the pump to ensure it is part of the pump.
 
It's not just CCs. I had my credit union call me one day, asking all the security verification questions and told me someone had attempted to transfer money from my acct from AZ. Now anything from my bank requires special verbal passwords. We can never be to careful.
 
Mine got skimmed, also. The bank thinks it was done at a RED BOX machine. The person charged $240.00 at a gas station in Kentucky, the bank immediately saw something odd and stopped it from happening about an hour later, called us. Cancelled it and reissued us a new one.
 
I think the best one I have seen, was when I worked at Circuit City. I had a customer getting some stuff, and I noticed the store manager was standing back a bit waiting to talk to me. His wife's name was Athena (yes she was a hottie), and they had a pretty uncommon last name. Just so happened when I looked at the card his wifes name was on the card, so I acted like there was a problem and asked the manager to come over.... He was waiting to tell me that his wife's purse had been stolen at Walmart and asked us to all keep an eye out.....
 
Been there and done that... we had lunch at a local restaurant back when we still lived in Texas.... I used my debit card and the next morning went to Lowe's to pick up some small item... discovered my card was missing... evidently was left at the restaurant... got home to the phone ringing and it was my bank telling me they had just declined a $900 charge in NJ... they thought it suspicious because they had just approved a $600 charge in Portland.... I was surprised that the charge had gone through as I don't think there was that much in the account at the time... bank canceled cards, sent new one and replaced the monies...
 
Jim Smith said:
I've had it happen twice, both times the day after I had eaten at one particular resturant my wife likes. The first time was $3000 for an airplane ticket to Abu Dhabi and the second time was for $2500 worth of clothing. Since I wasn't able to prove that a server had skimmed the card, I didn't report it to the police. I switched to only paying cash at that resturant until the last time I went there a couple of months ago and found out that some thief had stolen the catalytic converter off of my car parked n the very busy parking lot while we were eating lunch. That I reported to the resturant manager, filed a police report and quit going to that resturant.

Like others, my CC company called me immediately when the charges were attempted and issued me a new card.

Jim Smith
Click to expand...
You need to start eating in better neighborhoods.

I can't imagine removing a converter from a recently parked vehicle. You should be able to catch the guy by popping into the local hospital and see who's coming in to treat his third degree burns.
 
randyrls said:
Many financial institutions will send you an email for every charge made on your credit card. Mine does and it reminds me to put the amount in my computer program.
Click to expand...

I can check my accounts online or on my iphone. In fact, part of my weekday routine is to pop online and quickly check my accounts, reconciling the prior day's reciepts with what the bank shows.

Over the years, my bank has called me maybe half a dozen times to verify that irregular charges were appropriate. A few times, they were not and the bank dealt with it without my needing to take any action. On balance, I have been really happy with their service in this area.

Of course, a few irritations have come with it, also. Particularly when traveling internationally. You end up having some fairly surreal conversations where you have to affirm that did indeed make purchases thousands of miles apart within a short amount of time. One particularly amusing conversation found me spending a few minutes explaining how traveling east across the international date line works.
 
maxwell_smart007 said:
I think every credit card has a microchip in it, doesn't it? Or is that just Canada?

A credit card without the pin number is no good to anyone - it slows things down in the grocery line, but it's supposed to be much safer.
Click to expand...

No, we 'Merrycans are still stuck with magnetic strip cards for now, while Europeans and our Canadian neighbours have the chip-and-pin cards.
 
I've been gotten twice the first time was rough because the CC company figured since the card was used for porn subscriptions I was guilty no questions asked. The porn billing company was more than willing to void all charges and close the perps accounts. I still had to fight with American Express to get the late charges taken away.

The second time was cool because my card was used in a sting to catch the guy. The CC company called about weird charges (Turkish bath supplies and sex toys). They asked if the FBI could use the card to track and catch them but I would not be able to use the card during the investigation. I got a call a week later saying they caught the guys and were cancelling the card.

I only use debit cards now and watch the account like a hawk.
 
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