Monday lunch break -- something that wasn't credit card fraud, helped me to uncover actual fraud
This morning one of my credit card companies texted me with a suspicious charge. I didn't know what this charge was, so I declined it. Later I talked with a fraud specialist, they thought maybe my card was compromised while I was traveling. So now my card has been canceled, and they're sending me a new one. That's fine, I like cleaning out my monthly charges from time to time. This is the credit card with the lion's share of my personal and charitable spending, so it may be a chore sending everybody the new charge number, when I receive it.
But during my lunch break I figured out where the charge came from, and it wasn't fraudulent after all, it was from one of the two porn services I'm currently happily subscribed to. But it was an annual charge of $$$.$$, not the monthly charge of $$.$$ I thought I was ALREADY paying for this porn service.
As I kept investigating, the monthly charge of $$.$$ was to a porn service I've never belonged to, never even heard of. Huh? What? But somehow it began around the same time as the annual charge for the porn service I do belong to, so I got confused about which charge was for what ... and now for a couple years I've been paying $$.$$ each month to a porn service I've never belonged to -- roughly $1,000 of fraud. So there must have been some sort of sneaky pre-checked box that signed me up for an additional porn service, and then the generic billing company names confused me. Or something.
But also, I received zero warning of this annual recharge, so no wonder I wasn't expecting it. But I thought I was already paying monthly for this service, not annually. I think they usually don't bother to warn people of the annual charge because they don't want people canceling beforehand. So -- you don't get your annual charge this time anyway, porn company.
I was able to cancel the monthly charge online without speaking with a human. The annual charge didn't go through, but I'm still able to view the content this morning, but now I've gone ahead and canceled it online also.
So now I'm down to one porn service (that I know of). Until they try to rebill me next month, heh.
Over the next month I'll see: (1) how many prior vendors are honored by the credit card company even though they're still using the old card number, (2) how many prior vendors I won't bother renewing. This could clear up my spending for a month, and then let me rechoose my GGC charities and other subscriptions.
I should be more careful when signing up for porn services that I'm accounting for all the charges, but I'd thought I had accounted for all the charges, but sometimes when I do sign up for them I'm intoxicated ... so ... there went $1,000 over two years.
Even somebody who checks his billing statement every month can get fooled.
But during my lunch break I figured out where the charge came from, and it wasn't fraudulent after all, it was from one of the two porn services I'm currently happily subscribed to. But it was an annual charge of $$$.$$, not the monthly charge of $$.$$ I thought I was ALREADY paying for this porn service.
As I kept investigating, the monthly charge of $$.$$ was to a porn service I've never belonged to, never even heard of. Huh? What? But somehow it began around the same time as the annual charge for the porn service I do belong to, so I got confused about which charge was for what ... and now for a couple years I've been paying $$.$$ each month to a porn service I've never belonged to -- roughly $1,000 of fraud. So there must have been some sort of sneaky pre-checked box that signed me up for an additional porn service, and then the generic billing company names confused me. Or something.
But also, I received zero warning of this annual recharge, so no wonder I wasn't expecting it. But I thought I was already paying monthly for this service, not annually. I think they usually don't bother to warn people of the annual charge because they don't want people canceling beforehand. So -- you don't get your annual charge this time anyway, porn company.
I was able to cancel the monthly charge online without speaking with a human. The annual charge didn't go through, but I'm still able to view the content this morning, but now I've gone ahead and canceled it online also.
So now I'm down to one porn service (that I know of). Until they try to rebill me next month, heh.
Over the next month I'll see: (1) how many prior vendors are honored by the credit card company even though they're still using the old card number, (2) how many prior vendors I won't bother renewing. This could clear up my spending for a month, and then let me rechoose my GGC charities and other subscriptions.
I should be more careful when signing up for porn services that I'm accounting for all the charges, but I'd thought I had accounted for all the charges, but sometimes when I do sign up for them I'm intoxicated ... so ... there went $1,000 over two years.
Even somebody who checks his billing statement every month can get fooled.