No Charge

I got an email last night from my credit card company. The subject line read, “Action Needed: Please confirm you made this purchase.” The purchase in question was for an airline ticket, on Jet Blue. Anybody who knows me, as apparently my credit card company does, knows that I’m about as likely to purchase an airline ticket as I am to purchase dance lessons.

The email said that the purchase was declined, and down below, it asked if I recognized the purchase. There was a green button to click for “Yes”, and a Red button for “No”. I stared at this for a few minutes wondering if this email was in itself a scam, so I decided not to click either button. Instead, I called the credit card company, using the number on the back of my card.

When I called, I got the automated greeting and it asked me a series of questions, beginning with the last four digits of my account number and I had to punch the numbers in on the phone. Then it asked me for my zip code and then my date of birth. I punched in the various answers and eventually it asked me to to punch in the first three letters of my mom’s maiden name.

Obviously, at some point, I set this up as one of my security questions. The problem was, where all of the previous questions involved punching in numbers, this one involved punching in letters.

I’ve run into this once or twice before. When I answered something like this in the past, I didn't know whether I was supposed to press the phone buttons like I was texting, or if I was just supposed to press the button once if the letter was anywhere on it. Whatever I did before, I remembered I did it wrong. I just couldn't remember what it was that I did.

So, I went for the gold and just pressed each button once, and sure enough, I got kicked immediately into their Fraud Department. Apparently, they knew why I was calling.

After a minute or two on hold, due to the fact that each of their Fraud Representatives were busy helping other scam victims, a real person got on the line and asked me more security questions.

Once she was satisfied that I was who I said I was, we got down to the heart of the matter. Yes, somebody tried to purchase a plane ticket, and no, it wasn’t me. And no, my card wasn’t lost, so someone has my information- but not my card.

The Fraud Rep asked me about a few more recent purchases, running down a couple that I had just made. Fortunately, they were all ones that I recognized. I thought later that maybe someone smarter than myself would have denied those purchases too, but I’m not smarter than myself.

Originally, my account was going to get canceled and they would send out new cards- hopefully to arrive in the next three or four days. Maybe. I wasn’t particularly crazy about this idea.

This is the only credit card I own. Years ago, I also owned a Sears charge card. I must have gotten it through a promo, because I think I only used it once. I still carried it around in my wallet, though. Eventually it got brittle and cracked into pieces. I used to get threatening letters from Sears saying that they would cut off my credit if I didn’t use it- which I didn’t, so they did. Now I just get desperate emails from them asking me to buy SOMETHING.

Anyway, she agreed that I could still use this current card with a few stipulations. First, I could only use the card “in state”. This, to me, meant that the scammer was likely someone out of state- thus narrowing the potential suspects down to several billion people.

The other stipulation was that I could only use the card in “face to face” transactions.

“So, does this mean I can’t order anything online?”, I intelligently asked. “Yes, that's what it means.” she said, “That’s not a face to face transaction.” I wanted to ask her if I could buy gas, because technically, a gas pump is not a face. But then I thought that maybe now was not the right time to get into a further discussion of this "face-to-face" concept.

We finished our phone call and I started a list of all the accounts that I would now have to update once my new card arrived- places like Amazon, Express Scripts and others. And as I was making this list, I wondered which one of these trusted friends of mine had betrayed me-and which ones I was now going to hand over all of my updated information to, so that they could do it to me all over again.

When I got done making the list, I went online to look at all the things that I now couldn’t buy. Before this happened, I had no desire to do any online shopping at all. I had been "looking forward" to another typical night of doing nothing but sitting on the couch and listening to the paint peel.

But now, I felt constricted (restricted?). It was a lot like when you have to have a fasting lab the next day- where you can’t eat for an entire TWELVE HOURS starting the night before, and so you can only think about how much you want to be eating and how much you can't, and why does this have to happen to me and how come the whole world has it better than me, and why is life so unfair.

Actually, it was exactly like that.

So, after talking with Rachael and briefly to Jake, I sat on the couch and listened to the paint peel and thought about my hidden enemies and plotted how I could exact my revenge- pretty much like every other night. Also, like every other night, I gave up and went up to bed.

Somewhere around 11:45, a ringing awoke me from my deep sleep. After a few futile attempts of slapping away at my alarm clock, I realized that I should been slapping the phone.

I never get a call in the middle of the night and I never want to. It can only be bad news- or a mistake- or a telemarketer- all various forms of bad news.

It turned out that it was the same friendly Fraud Rep that I talked to before. Through my stupor, I understood her to ask me if I had just made an over nine hundred dollar purchase from Amazon.com. My heart raced. Did I get up during the night and uncontrollably start ordering stuff?  I was pretty sure the answer was "No". Maybe this call was a test. Maybe she was calling to see if I really knew what a "face to face transaction" was.

I told her that I hadn’t made this purchase, fairly sure that I was telling her the truth. I explained to her that I understood from our previous conversation that this would have qualified as a "NON-face to face transaction"- thus displaying my full grasp of the concept. I could smell the gold star.

She asked me a few more question, which I can’t remember. Then I stumbled back to bed, where I tossed and turned for quite some time.

As I lay there in bed, I felt a little bit violated, and not in a good way. I wondered about those purchases. How did they get my information? Who buys nine hundred dollars worth of stuff on someone else’s card? Did this guy have a list of stuff ahead of time, waiting for this opportunity, or was he just "stuffing his pants"? Maybe most importantly, since he was on my dime, was he paying full price or were these Lightning Deals?

Why not let some of these transactions go through, I wondered. I wouldn't pay for them, of course. But then they could have the FBI dress up as UPS men and deliver the merchandise and then catch the “perps” red handed. A near seamless plan, near as I could tell. I regretted not having come up with this plan when I was on the phone with the Fraud Rep. I'm sure it would have meant another gold star.

This morning, when I checked my email, I found I had one from Amazon.com. It was telling me that a suspicious account had been opened up using my credit card- which they have since closed and cancelled all pending orders.

I expected more phone calls today, but so far, there have been none.

Three more days to go until the new card gets here. Three more days. Until then, all I can do is wait.

I think about that plane ticket.

I wonder where that plane was going.