Jesus!
 

Well I just got back from the longest local operations ever. just to find out that someone went on a Apple shopping spree on me while I was gone! They spent $2200 total at the Santa Monica and Rodono Beach apple stores and then filled up their gas tank. Shitty.

Sorry to hear that Carlos. That sucks.

Credit card companies are good about that, fight it.

Total bummer Carlos. What credit card company?

Visa. I made a fraud report already. They are being good about it. They said to make a police report and I would be contacted by an investigator on Friday. I will have the money back in my account in 5 business days. The issue is that I get underway again on Monday until the 20th of December. I wont know for sure until I get back.:suicide: $2200 is like the cost of new heads or some CF shit. It wasn't my credit card it was my debit card so the money came directly out of my checking account. They made three purchases at Apple stores for ~$700. I'm sure they went in there and bought Ipads. I'm willing to bet that they will catch someone. Ipads are trackable.

I had this same thing happen to me with my bank card. The bank was pretty quick at resolving it for me. The funny part about it is that about two months after it happened on my card they tried the same thing with my wifes and the bank caught it right away and notified us.

On an unrelated note. Anyone wanna buy some ipads? :)

Sorry to hear that, it sucks because debit card fraud isn't as cut and dry as credit card fraud. Anything over $50 and you could be liable for the difference. It gets worse the longer from the time the fraud occurred that you report it. If you report it a month or two after it happened some banks will tell you you are SOL.

If it was your debit card it might be someone close to you. You cant buy debit unless they know the pin number (except on purchases under $20). If they charged it as credit on the debit card you might be in a better position because I think they treat that as a credit transaction and give you the credit card protection. Depending whether it was a debit transaction and how long it took you to catch it, you might be screwed :(

Someone just tried to buy $600 of something at a gas station in Denmark on my Amex. Given that it was Denmark, it probably was a tank of gas. :smack: Over the years this has happened a couple times to me and I've never had any trouble (thought it was cc). This time it was just blocked at the point of sale. Amex is great about this kind of customer service. I've even had them return money from a vendor just because I wasn't happy with their service.

Debit is a different story but I think Sean has said the bank, at least his CU is pretty good about it. :huh:

One day I was going up Azusa canyon on my bike to hit the GMR for some fun after work. I stopped at that shitty little Arco off the freeway to fill up, $10 maybe $15. The next day my debit card (B of A) was frozen. I called to figure out why and there was debit fraud on it at the station. They showed the $10-15 transaction then a few minutes later someone tried to put $200 through on it. The bank luckily saw it as suspicious activity (I only rode a bike at the time, occasionally filled up my brothers car, never anything over ~$40 at a gas station tho) and froze the card.

I don't know if it was the attendant or the stations owner had some sort of scam going. Never went back to that station tho.:inout:

After that it sent my banks automated fraud protection into overdrive and ended up freezing my card whenever I went out of town or made any sort of big purchase.

Who knows. There's lots of ways to get those numbers. I have a friend who will sometimes just sniff unencrypted network traffic and there's all kinds of financial data flying around. This is pretty common at restaurants that use wireless ordering/payment systems.

At times I travel a fair bit and it sometimes results in amusing situations where I'll have one purchase in one city in the morning, then at a restaurant/bar later at night the same day thousands of miles away and it's legit. But because it's not all the time, it gets flagged. So I'm tired and possibly drunkish in a loud environment trying to explain what happened.