During the course of a month, all of us have things we do on a routine basis. Whether that is take out the trash, do the laundry, play softball or even pay bills. If you are anything like me (hopefully not), you tend to do those things on the same day of the week. For me I try to pay bills on Sunday while I am watching TV. I have noticed myself looking at the bills a lot closer these days for a few reasons:
- To see if there is anything we can do to bundle bills (cable, phone, web) to save money.
- To try and get a handle on how much money I foolishly spend on things!
- To determine whether there are any mistakes.
Over the past six months I have noticed a number of charges on my credit cards that weren’t ours. In fact over the weekend when I was reviewing my Visa bill, I noticed that apparently while I was in Madison, WI last month I was also in Cancun, Mexico charging a bunch of things. Since I don’t have an identical twin, that obviously wasn’t me and that charge is being disputed.
It seems to me that I am hearing more and more stories about bogus charges on credit cards.
Last week I was on a website reading about my beloved Redsox and a pop up window appeared that said "take a Redsox quiz and see what your Sox IQ is". Since I was curious to see what my "Sox IQ" was, I took the quiz. You needed to put in your cell phone number and check a box to check to see your results. I did enter my number but before I checked the box, I started to read the fine print on terms and conditions. I never hit enter but all of a sudden I started to get these text messages saying I was being charged $29.99 a month for some service that I had no idea I ordered or what it was for. The end result was I called the number and of course they never picked up. I did eventually get it taken care of, but it was a pain.
- Have you noticed any bogus charges on your credit cards?
- Are you noticing more than in the past?
- Have you heard of any credit card scams that we should be aware of?
Moving forward I will be reviewing our credit cards charges closely–especially during the holiday season.
I hope you do the same thing and it saves you some money. If so, you can thank me later!
I look forward to hearing your comments.
Fee Sepahi says:
Hi Merrill,
To be honest I casually review my charges, but since I am an avid debit card user, and it impacts my cash flow directly, I do tend to monitor it like a hawk. I have heard from several friends about identity fraud and have checked my credit report recently. Nothing odd, thankfully!
I will get more diligent about playing closer attention to the credit card, though. Thank you for the reminder and Happy New Year!
Fee
Peter Van Brunt says:
Having had my cards numbers stolen (from a locked locker, swiped on a hand scanner) 3 years ago while at my health club, I am very conscientious about checking my monthly statements. The police nailed the guy, and he had over 5000 stolen credit card numbers on his laptop. This can happen anywhere, and I would strongly endorse your warning, check your statements carefully each month. I also like CitiBank because they have a tool to generate one-time use virtual credit card numbers. I use these exclusively for all online transactions
Merrill Dubrow says:
Peter,
Thanks for your comments. I never knew about the CitiBank one time use virtual credit card numbers. I have a Citi card and will need to look into that.
Appreciate the information.
Merrill
Candace Lopez says:
Great advice on closely reviewing the credit card bills. I’m not as careful in reviewing as I should be, but when I do take the time, I periodically catch a duplicate charge. I also need to look into the CitiBank virtual credit card numbers. Appreciate the tips. Happy New Year!
Candace
Jessi Boyd says:
I recently had my credit card company call me to verify that I had ordered a new card – which I hadn’t. Someone had added themselves as a user on my account and had ordered their own credit card. Fortunately my CC company called me to verify and I was able to freeze my account and cancel my card before any damage was done. All I can think of is that someone skimmed my credit card while I was using it on vacation in NOLA. Before that I hadn’t used it in 6 months or more since I prefer my debit card. It was pretty scary to think someone could simply call up and ask for a card in their name without me adding them to my account. I even got their card in the mail…
Merrill Dubrow says:
Jessi,
Glad you had this fixed before it was a real problem. I just found another error on my card for $224.00 at a Hilton hotel. When calling to ask why they couldn’t tell me why i was charged – the end result they took it off my credit card – lots of fun…. not.
Merrill
Slug says:
Merrill,
You might want to consider using a personal finance aggregator site like Yodlee.com. Yodlee provides the security interface between banks and other financial institutions on the web. I mention this because when you sign on to Yodlee to bring all your finances in one place you have to add the usernames and passwords to every site you want added into your full net worth. It sounds scary and for many, it’s simply feels like giving over too much information to one source. However, this the way the world is going. Some are earlier adopters than others. I have used Yodlee for a couple of years now with no identity theft issues. In fact, because it aggregates all my transactions in one place, it’s easy to review them on a daily or weekly basis. You can basically see your entire cashflow right before your eyes. It’s both scary and empowering. In addition to loans, credit cards, 401k’s, IRA’s, Paypal accounts and bank transactions, you can also add in all your rewards cards to track your points at Marriott, Delta, Amtrak, and countless other places. Other popular personal finance aggregators are Mint.com and Wesabe.com. I use Mint as well (who actually uses Yodlee for their site security) because the user interface is much nicer and you can set up budget goals. However, Mint does not currently track rewards accounts nor does it allow you put in the potential value of your home to offset your the size of your mortgage in the net worth calculation, and I just get tired of looking at such a large negative number for my net worth. Also Yodlee stores the passwords in a way that allows you to click a link and it will automatically log you into most of your sites, which is handy when you want to take a deeper look at what’s going on in a certain account.
Obviously, you never want to lose or give away your Yodlee password.
Hope this helps you and your readers out. Once set-up, it is an incredible time saver.
Disclaimer: I don’t work for any of these companies. I just spend a lot of time on personal finance.
Merrill Dubrow says:
Slug,
Appreciate your comments. I have NEVER heard of Yodlee or the other ones you mentioned. I need to check this out for sure. I am having too many problems and it is really taking up alot of time.
Thanks again.
Merrill
Vikram Hosur says:
Merrill,
I monitor my card pretty closely as I use it for almost everything. I have spotted a few small charges I was unaware of, as well as a few transaction fees…
Btw, I used to use mint.com as Slug mentioned. I think it works very well to track your spending into one program. The downside (for me) was since almost all of my spending is in one credit card, I’m able to view categories/amounts pretty easy for the most part.
Thanks for the heads up, with more online shopping this past month I should keep a close watch on my card.
Merrill Dubrow says:
Amazing that I found two more charges that didn’t make sense. One was a hotel charge for $350.00 I made the reservation which was a courtesy hold but the customer service person NEVER told me they were charging me a deposit right away. Be careful that this doesn’t happen to you.
Merrill