Credit Card Company Stupidity

So here's the story, which started Monday night when I tried to buy something late at night through Lands End. It told me the transaction wouldn't go through. After card was denied I made sure to call Mastercard the next day . I found out our account was hijacked AND apparently our cc info was made public somehow. . . When I asked which company had been hacked, they told me they couldn't tell me who it was. So they cancelled the card and issued a new one. Well, even though they said several current transactions were cleared, including Ben's oral boards, I'm getting an onslaught of e-mails and calls stating the transactions were denied.

I called them AGAIN YESTERDAY. Apparently, they knew since the 11th that we had been hacked. They told me they called our old phone number, and left a message, but no one called back. I asked why they didn't try to contact us another way. The answer was because we deny spam aka - product e-mails (although not PAYMENT e-mails) they "couldn't" e-mail us this important info. Well after talking to DH, who's e-mail is on the account, apparently HE DOES get promotional e-mails from them. AND - they didn't even mail us a notification - I asked. SOOOOOOO ANGRY.

When this happened years back with Visa, they locked our account online (which then prompted me to call them about immediate important info) AND I got at least TWO letters telling us the account was compromised. AND - they told me it was TJ Max who was hijacked. Makes us this Mastercard was hijacked since they wouldn't tell us who was...

So we're gonna close our account with MC. DH has been looking up cc recs by Consumer Reports and Mint. We're looking for one with some kind of cash back. He's looking in to Chase w/Visa. Has anyone used this card? Any other recs?

Oh and my dad told me to get a lifelock.com account to cover us further. He uses it, and said it's highly rated. So I think we're gonna do that too.

ARGH - I've spent HOURS this week on this one issue. . .

[PrincessFiona]

Gasping in horror with you. Holy crap! I am apalled that they didn't close your account and send you snailmail. Wow!

Kris

[diggitydot]

Don't deal with Lifelock. You can do the same thing they can by just locking down your credit reports. Put permanent fraud alerts on them and opt-out of all offers. Your CC company should provide free credit report monitoring, too.

I'm so sorry. This type of thing shakes your sense of security to the core. DH's card was stolen along with his wallet and it was horrible.

[corn poffi]

How terrible!

I have the Chase Freedom card (but it's Master Card), and I've only had one problem with them, but it was probably 75% my fault. I opened the card a couple years ago before I went on a trip to Europe, because they were offering 0% interest for like two years or something crazy like that. (Obviously this was before the economy took a nosedive). When I got back from Europe, I moved, and bought a ton of new crap, including a fancy schmansy laptop. When I was ordering the laptop online, I kept entering my old ZIP code, but with my current address. So Apple couldn't verify the purchase. Being incredibly stubborn, I just kept trying. Finally, I called Apple. They told me my ZIP code was wrong. Doh! I gave them the correct ZIP code, but Chase had disabled my account because I had tried so many times to purchase a big-ticket item. It took a week or so to finally get my card reactivated, which was kind of annoying, but it was my own stupidity that caused it.

Long story short, I recommend Chase credit cards.

[peggyfromwastate]

I have chase visa cards- Disney rewards, amazon rewards, and toys r us rewards. Yes, I have too many credit cards. But I have not had problems with them at all

The main card we use is a pentagon federal credit union visa card. Awesome rewards. No problems with them either.

We have a citibank MasterCard. It's not bad but I don't use it much.

Anyway, that cc company really behaved poorly.

We do have an identityguard credit monitoring account for dh. We got it thru Costco. It's about $7 per month and I can get new credit scores every month. It sends notices whenever there is a change to any account. Saves me rime because it's all in one place.

Good luck!!

[Meenah]

The same thing happened here. Mine was BOA Visa. My online order from CHEF's was denied. I received a new credit card in the mail from BOA stating that a third party merchant's account had been "compromised" including credit card holder's information. I hadn't opened my mail so I didn't know.

[SuzySunshine]

I know everyone says you can do the credit monitoring yourself and I haven't researched it so maybe LifeLock isn't the best but we will do something like that when we're done with training. Once we have enough money to worry about it the last thing I want to deal with is identity theft.

As for the rewards cards, my ILs have a Marriott reward card and a Discover and they get pretty much all of their hotels during travel now for free and Discover is much more widely accepted then it used to be.

[SoonerTexan]

Wow--that sucks!

I have two Chase credit cards...it's nice because I can go to a branch if I have an issue (though their credit card services is technically a separate part of Chase). I also like that I can see exactly what is going on when I log into my Chase account online--paying from my checking is easy too.

[Deebs]

We have Lifelock and love it. It is a hassle when you go to open anything, but that's part of what I love about it (I assume it would also be a hassle for anyone trying to open something in my name). We have caught two cases of fraud utilizing Lifelock. One was with someone opening a Bally's gym membership in my name, and the other was a credit card issue. While we're definitely paying a premium to not have to take care of identity protection ourselves - it's worth it to me in the time and piece of mind it saves.

As for a credit card - if you can not carry a balance, I don't think anything beats Amex. Great rewards, and they stand behind your purchases, including extending the warranty limits on items such as electronics. We have a Chase card (and maybe it's the one we have that's the issue), but we have put it away in our safe, only keeping it open to not change our credit score with available line of credit. We had our rate raised twice unexpectedly, and the only other company that did that to us was Bank of America. I'd go online and see what card is the "cheapest" to have.

[corn poffi]

I have two Chase credit cards...it's nice because I can go to a branch if I have an issue (though their credit card services is technically a separate part of Chase).

That's what I like about them too. When I had that issue with them, I went into my local branch to show them that I had the card in my possession, and then they called my other local bank to get a purchase history with them. Since I had really only used the card on vacation or to buy big-ticket stuff, they couldn't get a history from that account, so they had to do some research. It was so nice to be able to work with somebody in person, and not deal with somebody from the credit company in who-knows-where!

[MissCrabette]

I agree with diggitydot that you can do everything LifeLock does very easily. As far as I know, they don't actively monitor anything for you. Besides, this wasn't a case of identity theft and the same would've happened with or without LifeLock.

I don't think this is an issue of Visa versus MasterCard. Everytime there was suspicious activity on one of my cards, it was the credit card issuer that called me about it. I have had great experiences with CapitalOne, specifically their No Hassle Rewards card. I also love my American Express from Costco, but I can't say I've interacted with customer support enough to be able to recommend it.

I think the moral of the story is to keep your contact information updated. I still struggle with this, but a good way I've found to do this is to keep a running list of companies I do business with. That way I can go through that list and update everything after we move. Things still slip through the cracks somtimes, and just the other day I updated an account that had a phone number we last used in 2008. Yikes!

That said, I'm really sorry you had to go through that. It's especially aggravating that the company lied to you.

[diggitydot]

We also have the CapitolOne card. Love it. I also love that I can check EVERYTHING from my iPhone, but that it doesn't allow access to the actual account, just in case my phone is stolen.

[JaneDoe]

A couple of years ago, I checked our credit card online as I did everyday (Capitol One cash back Visa) to find that it was maxed out and not by us! All of the purchases were in Ontario, Canada and a lot of them were at Toys R Us. My first reaction was "what the hell had Dh been doing?" Then I realized (before the CC did) that our card had been compromised. That wasn't the worst part though. I soon realized that who ever had the cc had initiated payment by telephone from our checking account to the cc for $4000, presumably to lower the balance and gain more spending power! That freaked us out since it meant that they had our routing number and bank info to conduct that transaction.

We were able to get the payment reversed and the cc covered all of the fraudulent charges and fees. However, it took a lot of phone calls, paper work, closing accounts, opening new ones and time to deal with that fiasco. We pulled our credit reports which didn't show any other suspicious activity fortunately. We never figured out how the person(s) obtained our credit card/bank info., but we suspected that the compromise was somehow with Capitol One. We always paid our cc bills online and our bank info. was stored in their database. It was the only place where all of that financial information was stored in one place other than our house. Our home had been broken into and all of our mail is delivered to secure mailbox.

We no longer use that Capitol Visa except for two very small monthly payments (Netflix and the local newspaper). We have a better cash back card now anyhow.

[SoonerTexan]

FWIW, if you bank with Chase, have you checked out their rewards program for check cards? It is $25 a year, but so worth it. Of course it doesn't work if you are actually trying to use the "credit" part of a credit card, but if you are just doing it for points, I think the check card is the way to go. I hate waiting 3-5 days for a transaction to post to my CC account.

[MissCrabette]

ST, the thing is that you are better protected with a credit card than with a debit card if something were to happen. I don't need the credit part of a credit card because I pay them off every month, but I wouldn't have the same peace of mind just using my debit card.