Credit/Debit Card Fraud Nightmare :-(

Good morning, Everyone! I feel that I'm an expert on this subject today... because I've been going through it this week. I'm learning some important things, so I thought I'd share here in the Money Zone section.

My issue is with a pre-paid debit that I got a few years ago after having researched for the safest one. I just didn't trust credit cards and paid mine off... got rid of them. So I was thinking prepaid Visa debits are safe. Hmmm.... hard lesson learned. I just had a significant amount of money fraudulently stolen from the card.

So what can I advise? Check your balance if you use your credit or debit online. Check it *often* and don't wait for the monthly statement. In my case, it looks like after the number was stolen, the place (a phone company in India in this case) put the same amount of charges on day after day for a while until it was declined... indicating to them that they had emptied the card. Then they would have collected it all.

Fortunately, all those charges were still in "pending" state and I caught it in time before they physically got the money. Unfortunately, however, my money (even though I had pre-loaded the card with cash) cannot be returned for a few weeks. It was my upcoming vacation money and until I see if they actually will return it to me, it's lost.
I cannot stress enough the importance of checking your credit/debit balances often (also online banking balances if you do that.) I was never one to check that, and if the water company hadn't denied my payment this time, I wouldn't have found this out for a while yet... maybe even not until I was a thousand miles away on vacation and tried to use the card. Scary. And extremely stressful!

So scary! Thank God you had not gone on vacation before finding all these out. I have learnt from your experience and need to be extra careful with online payments. The good news is you get your money back.
Thanks for sharing.

That definitely sounds very stressful, but thankfully you were able to catch it before any more time had passed. I do agree that you need to be vigilant when it comes to credit/debit cards and to check your balances and transactions all the time. I fortunately have not had this happen to me and I hope I never do. I do not have credit cards anymore but I do have a debit card through my checking account. There are so many different companies that offer pre-paid debit cards it can be overwhelming trying to find the right one that you can trust. Hopefully, you will get your money soon so that you can enjoy your vacation. Good luck.