My husband discovered 2 fraudulent charges on our credit card today to an unknown-to-us restaurant. Credit card company says to first call the vendor. They said someone ordered food online, twice 3 days apart, with a different name and phone number but our credit card info. We cancelled the card, and the restaurant is out $600.
How does this happen? Is it possible the fraudster simply made a mistake entering her CC number, typed ours instead and it was accepted without the CVV code or the name & contact info matching that of our CC account?
I doubt it. I’ve made simple errors entering my CC info and it fails every time. Unless the restaurant just accepts the CC number and no other info, which I also doubt. And if that were the case, then shame on them for using unsecure CC practices, but I still don’t think it’s even possible to run the card without the other info.
Most likely your CC info was stolen, either by someone physically having the card while you were paying for something (I’ve had a couple instances where I believe this to be the case), it was skimmed with a machine overlay skimmer, or some other way. I’ve found that once they have the info they try to use it very quickly, so backtrack to right before the first fraud charge occurred and see if there’s any place where this could have occurred.
I have no idea, but once again, it surfaces negligence on all CC banks that refuse to add a simple anti-theft device.
Give us the option to ADD a PIN…!!!
Debit cards have PINs, but for some mysterious reason, banks will not allow us to add a PIN. Even if you CC is lost, stolen, or hacked, without the PIN it’s useless.
When I was accepting credit cards online, I was allowed to enter specific criteria I was willing to accept. They included whether the zip code matches, street numbers, etc. I could deny acceptance on more than just card number, expiration and CVV. If the restaurant is limited to just those, it may be that their processor has limited the checks and balances on their swipe machine.
Neither of those in the 20 days prior to the first fraud purchase.
We may never know what happened. Presumably the restaurant is contracting the person who placed the orders to try to get them to pay up. They’re out the money…it’s just costing us time. And it’s getting old. We had the card only about a year, because the previous one, which we had about 12 years, was cancelled due to a fraudulent charge.
I was answering the comment that credit cards can’t have pins. And I don’t think this thread is about online purchases, but rather about fraudulent purchases.
Lisa, I understand your frustration, if you cancel a credit card it will have an impact on your overall credit score (everyone’s situation is different) but I would highly recommend following the bank procedure and contacting the merchant the reporting back to the cc company, they will remove the charges from your card and your credit card will be replaced with a new card which allows you to move forward w/o impact to your credit score, w/o you loosing reward points etc. My personal experience and that of friends is that there probably isn’t a bank or credit union who hasn’t had this happen to their customers so moving to another company guarantees nothing.
Good luck and glad your solution worked for you.