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We're in it Now
I ran an errand this morning, then went to yoga. When I was finished, I went back to my car and looked at my phone. There was a voicemail from an 800 number that turned out to be Amex. Fraud alert, please call. So I did.
The last time I had a fraud alert, it turned out that my account had been flagged for making too many charitable contributions in the past week. Seriously. So I wasn’t worried. In the automated system, they asked if they could text me the details. I said they could and the system stayed on the line while I checked.
$1,300 to Continental Airlines. Continental Airlines doesn’t exist anymore, but nevermind that. I didn’t make that charge, so I clicked the button and the next message said that they were transferring me to a live person.
The live person asked me to confirm that the charge was fraudulent, confirm that one more charge was fraudulent, then ran through a bunch more charges that were legitimate including the one from this morning. Then she reversed the two bad charges, cancelled my card and said a new one would be at my house on Monday.
This whole process took less than 15 minutes from my cell phone, sitting in my car.
When I got home, I logged in to look at my recent charges again. Everything looks fine again. I don’t know what kind of data mining action these people have going on, but this is the second time (the first was on my Chase card) that fraud was spotted and flagged before I knew there was anything wrong. And then killed as soon as they got hold of me.
This, kids, is why I feel totally comfortable using plastic all the time.
The Next Dark Age 