Oh. My. God.

Posted on by

I feel ill.

I was just doing some bill-paying and such, and I logged in to a credit card account that I don’t use much. I’m trying to pay off the balance, so the only activity I tend to see on it is my last payment and the interest accumulated.

As such, I tend to not look at my statement until it’s time to pay the bill. (I signed up for the statement-by-email quite some time ago.) Imagine my surprise when I saw a balance nearly $3000 higher than it was last month.

Gasp. Choke.

In red lettering, at the top of my statement, it said something about high-risk activity on my card and to call customer service right away.

So of course, I immediately dialed customer service. They were very nice. They closed my account and are sending me an affidavit that I need to sign and send back to them so they can investigate.

The charge was $2795 to United Airlines. She asked if I was sure no one else (such as a friend or family member) has access to this account. Um, yeah. No one does. And even if they did, I wouldn’t want to know someone who would charge $3000 in airline tickets without telling me.

I can’t figure out how this happened. This card doesn’t leave my apartment. Ever. I don’t get statements in the mail, and even if I did, I would shred anything that had my account number on it. Gah.

It doesn’t matter. They’re going to take care of it, I’m sure…but still, I feel sort of violated.

10 thoughts on “Oh. My. God.”

  1. The credit card company obviously flagged it as high risk and should have called YOU!

    This recently happened to my parents. There was a PayPal charge for a $2000 laptop on one of their cards. It also happened to me once a few years ago … there was a monthly charge of $39.95 for something I never ordered.

    Your card isn’t from Citigroup by any chance, is it?

  2. Where have you used the card?

    Target Visa can be a PITA sometimes but if anything is even slightly “off,” they freeze the account and call me. They always freeze it around Christmas b/c I use it more often. They froze it when we moved from CO to PA and hadn’t gotten the address change and any time there’s a large purchase (like when we bought our big TV), they call. Kind of amazing this company didn’t call you.

  3. Hey, wait a minute! Aren’t the airlines supposed to ask the passenger for the credit card they used to purchase the ticket?

  4. It’s entirely possible they tried to call. We screen, and my name isn’t on the voice mail.

    I haven’t used the card ANYwhere in years. It was still one of the payment methods listed on my Amazon account…that’s the only thing I can even think of.

  6. Oh, I know what you’re going through! That happened to me a year or so ago…Not for such a large amount, but still…and like you, it was a card I never even USE.

    Scary stuff. Glad it’s taken care of.

  7. That’s a 27 for ya! Holy crap, I wonder where one goes for a $2700 plane ticket?

    I know my credit union shut down all of the member cards and made everyone get a new one when there was some sort of high risk activity. Pain in the ass, but a good extra step.

    Although this sounds like a single isolated instance.

  8. Also…even if your name isn’t on the voice mail and you just have a number this isn’t atypical, the company still should have left a message for you. Mark and I CLEARLY state our names on our answering machine and yet get at least 2 calls a day for about 5 different people from collection agencies, they don’t even listen before saying “Julie Fernandez please call Citibank at….” they just leave the message.

  10. Jen is right – I once received messages to call the CC fraud department. Also, when I was subletting, collection messages were left all the time for someone who didn’t even live there.

Leave a Reply