Eye opening experience with credit cards

[MidMOTraveler]

This is not really about Montana’s but traveling.
We are in Mexico for the winter and had a credit card issue.
This Did Not happen in Mexico cards haven’t been used or out of safe.
Charges were made before leaving home but we didn’t see right away.

Luckily we have other cards if needed but the one compromised was our main travel card. It had monthly auto pay charges and such to chase down. The credit cards card company was great to work with.

I know folks don’t like having a bunch of credit cards. Just make sure you have a couple different ones. In our case we can’t just get a new one delivered ASAP.
The learning experience has taught us to know and have contact information for our auto pay charges handy.

[richfaa]

We had the same experience with a cabelas card. We did not use it but charges showed up on the west coat somehow someone got the card number and used it without swiping the card. canceled the charges, cancelled the card. You card can be used without actually having the card.

[PeteandJoan]

Have had 3 replaced due to unauthorized charges in last 10 yrs. Got a back-up card about a yr or so ago. Just use it a little to keep it active . I wish those scammers would get a real job!

[BB_TX]

We have Discover as our primary card and Visa as an alternate that we rarely use. Discover has been great. A couple times we have gotten an e-mail from Discover that they had detected "suspicious activity" on our card and they would be sending us new cards. We could continue using the old cards until we received the new ones. And they would continue to monitor the old ones until then. They must have blocked any of those suspicious charges as we have never seen anything odd show up on our statements or account. Once they even blocked a charge I was trying to make. And wife had to call them and say yes, we really are 300 miles from home. But that occurred shortly after they detected other questionable activity.

[DQDick]

Over the years we've had to replace the Discover twice and a Mastercard once. Both went smoothly and because we have all our cards warn us of charges over $300 all three problems where caught when the card was first used.

[Montana Man]

Good heads up. Visa halts charging without notice if they detect fraud and can be a real pain. Our Amex is awesome everywhere we've been in the world. Having multiple cards is just good traveling practice.

[twindman]

Our wells fargo Visa card is very good about monitoring charges out of state. We have to now go in and list all the states we will be in on a trip.

I too have had about 4 cards replaced - two in the last 2 years or so because of the large corporations that got hacked. Also at least 2 or 3 times a 'robo' call from wells fargo reported suspicious activity and started asking about charges at a specific store and date. If I say no, not mine we got transferred to a real person and they removed all the charges that were not mine. Then I had to memorize new card info, but I guess that is a small price to pay for security.
WAY back when (30 years ago) I booked a flight and hotel from Phoenix to Chicago on a site in the midwest. I don't remember if I spotted it or the bank notified me, but someone charged $600 for an ice sculpture at a wedding in St Louis to be delivered in about 2 days. The cops could have just showed up and nabbed the culprits, but I assume the bank thought it was cheaper to just write it off. Made me mad!

[mlh]

Several years ago 20 or so, we sent a guy 2 Swarovski rifle scopes $1800 each and charged them to his credit card. We made sure his card was changed before we sent the scopes and had him sign for the scopes. The card had been stolen and the $3600 was charged back to us. We would have been out of $3600 but we had UPS sign for them. We ask UPS who signed for then. They couldn’t give us his name because you couldn’t read it. UPS had to refund our money. This is the time UPS started their advertisement “what can Brown do for you”. I still smile every time I hear that add. So the card company isn’t the one that looses it’s the merchant. Don’t worry about Visa, Master Card or any other card company.
If you have a debit are it’s your money a credit card it’s the bank’s money. My banker advised me not to have a debit card for just this reason.
Lynwood

[PeteandJoan]

I enabled a notification of ANY charge of $.01 or more to alert me when my cards are used. I get the notification almost immediately after I use my cards. With all the scimmers on fuel pumps you need to know ASAP if your card is being used instead of crossing your fingers and hoping card security detects something. Visa has always called me to question if we made the charges if suspicious?

[jimcol]

We have a capital one card that text notifications are almost instant. We have a SamsClub card through Synchrony bank. Like the card because the rewards are good and it doubles as our membership card. Have set all the alerts but never receive them. When I call and talk to Synchrony about this they refer me to their website which states they don't guarantee text alerts. I ask if anybody gets text alerts from them. They will not answer the question. Meaning to take up this issue with SamsClub but haven't gotten around to it. Anyone else have this issue? Anyone else have a card issued by Synchrony that does get alerts?

[MidMOTraveler]

Ok ours is Capital One and I receive the text alerts for all charges.
I think the reason I missed the first one might have been traveling at the time. I guess when they tried a second time I got the alert and everything got stopped.
I think that is a great service.
We learned just how great last summer in Michigan. We had just activated the alert system with the app. Stopped to fuel and wife went to get some snacks.
She got back in the truck and her phone shows a $1 charge , she thought it was for her charge on the snacks. Well needless to say she marched in and confronted the poor cashier.
She didn’t know how it happened? Wife called Capital One and we find out some gas stations run the card for a $ buck to make sure card it legitimate.
Then it is set up to auto credit the charges in a very short time .
Without the app we would not have known this and never seen s $1 charge.
Kind of a great tool to have .