The trip was great...

[agilebrit]

Until terrorists stole our credit card number.

Yes, you read that right.

The beach was lovely. The food was awesome. The parents were happy to see us. We were happy to see them. They have frogs! And ospreys. And lots and lots and lots of birds. Sandpipers are teh cwoot OMG.

And then we tried to leave. And the gas tank thing at the Port Aransas airport declined our card. Which has a ridiculously high limit on it, and I paid it on time...so I called.

Yeah. Someone charged a $700 plane ticket on Jazeera Airways to our credit card. And $300 to Oman Aviation Services. And a couple of others on Air Arabia.

Fortunately, the credit card company caught it before it got completely out of hand and stuck a hold on the card...which we found out about when we tried to buy gas for the plane.

However, it's the only credit card we have. And it's not like we carry enough cash around to put gasoline in an airplane on a cross-country trip. So we wound up having to call them every time we needed to charge something. Which was a pain in the ass, but yay for protecting us.

So, anyway, we're home. I'm never going to catch up with my flist. Anything interesting happen while we were gone?

Comments

[mermaidrain.livejournal.com]

So, said protection will prevent you from actually having to PAY for those false charges, right?

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

It should, yes. Or we'll only be liable for $50.

But I think we're going to get a backup card, forthwith. Because this SUCKED, man.

[palmaceae.livejournal.com]

yay for credit card thieves. my credit card number was stolen several days ago as well and although i can't claim the distinction of them having run up several thousand dollars on it, they went to universal studios and grocery shopping for a couple hundred. which just makes me wonder how someone goes shopping at a grocery store with no card, only a number. that's incredibly suspicious.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

You can do your grocery shopping online now and have it delivered to your door, some places.

I'm just glad they twigged to the fraudulent charges. Otherwise I wouldn't have caught it until I went to pay the bill at the end of the month. Ugh.

[bigsciencybrain.livejournal.com]

Eek! Did they have any ideas of how they got your info?

[laii.livejournal.com]

Hogfather. November 25. Channel 16 (i think..)

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Thankee! :)

[crayonbreakygal.livejournal.com]

Holy crap. Why didn't the credit card company flag it after the first charge? Clearly the computer should have since you've never made a purchase like that. That happened when we bought a new TV. We got home with a message saying did we just make a major purchase. Yeah, and always have a backup card. One time my card wouldn't swipe because something was wrong with it. Well, the place wouldn't punch the numbers in manually so I had to use the other card.

Eeeek all around.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Oh, they caught it at the first $700 charge--apparently whoever got the number made a Google charge and an iTunes charge of $1 each before trying the big one, and that's a pretty typical method of seeing if the card works. The other charges were attempts that were declined. But they were persistent little bastards.

WaMu has been trying to get me to apply for their card for awhile; I guess I will. But what a pain in the butt.

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

Yikes!! Wow. Really glad they caught the charges, but that sure does stink.

We had one of our cards frozen once... and it was weird. We'd gone to pay for lunch and rackham's card kept getting declined, so we tried mine, which came from the SAME account, and it worked just fine. There was a branch of our bank located conveniently next to the cafe, so he ran over there while we were waiting for our food and found out that his card had been part of a phishing attempt.

I've actually gotten a bit paranoid about the whole thing and it's one of the reasons why I always try to have enough money on hand to pay for the gas I would need to get home (or to a relative or friend's house) when I'm on roadtrips.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Having enough money to get home when you're driving is one thing. Having enough money to fuel an airplane is quite another...

It's a fine line between carrying a whole crapload of cash and worrying about whether your card's going to get frozen. This is the first time this has ever happened to us, and will hopefully be the last.

[dragonflymuse.livejournal.com]

Holy crap! That's... ::has no words::

Credit card fraud is sadly commonplace, but to use the card for something that is so possibly threatening... I hope they track the perp down.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Well, law enforcement is definitely involved; the CC company takes stuff like this really seriously. We haven't gotten a call from the FBI or Homeland Security yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if we did.

However, I don't know if we'll ever know if/when they catch them. They may not tell us.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

How on Earth did they get your credit card? That has to be one of the more bizarre situations I've heard. We keep 2 cards because everyone who doesn't take AMEX takes Mastercard but that's all we've got. Yowzers! I'm glad you got the good time before that happened.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Either someone snagged the number from a Point of Sale, or they were scanning for cell phone calls and picked it up that way when the Hubby called to make a reservation for a rental car for us.

Either way, NOT COOL. *growls*