North Bay Man Victim of Identity Theft – Protect Your Personal Information
When I think of identity theft, I always think that this is something that happens to someone else, never me. Last week, I was a victim of identity theft. Hopefully, my story will help you and save you the aggravation that I experienced.
I woke up at 3 am one morning with a feeling that something was wrong. I went down to my home office to check my email. Within ten minutes of logging on to my email account I started receiving automatic notifications from my credit card company. Not enough funds. Not enough funds. Not enough funds. I received a total of 16 emails going from $2400, $1800, $900, $700, $600, $500 $223 $80$ $24, $13, $6.00 $4.25 and so on. I knew that I had not made any purchases lately with my credit card, so I looked into it immediately. As these emails continued to come in I sent emails to my credit card company, notifying them of the fraud. I wrote messages like: Please call me. They took another $700. Please block my account. And finally, help. I even called the 1800 number on the back of the credit card to access the 24 hour support line. Apparently the 24 hour customer service line was not staffed that night and I was at the mercy of the fraudsters.( The credit card company was open 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, but not in a row.)
Out of desparation I called VISA USA who then forwarded me to VISA International. VISA International placed a block on my card to protect the $3.10 remaining on my credit card. My credit card company called me three days latter, and I made a claim which will take 90 to 120 to investigate. In the meantime, I am out the money. I applied for a new credit card, which took 4 weeks to receive. Have you had an issue with identity theft? Please comment and share your experiences on the topic of Identity Theft.
Just for fun, I called all of the other credit card companies at 4 am. Out of the 7 companies I called, they all had a support line that was open. The credit card company that I deal with, was the only company that did not have a support line for fraud that was open 24 hours a day.
The ironic things was that if the credit card company was not asleep at the wheel, the entire fraud could have been averted. Perhaps, credit card companies consider fraud as a cost of doing business and justify their high interest rates to account for this built in loss?
As a side note, you will have 30 days to file a report with the credit card company, dont miss this deadline. Missing this deadline will make it harder to retrieve your money. One thing I should have done was file a police report with the police. (OPP)
Protect your personal information and check out this list of 10 Tips to Prevent Identity Theft. If only I had read this before my theft, I could have been more prepared to deal with the situation. Please Retweet.(RT)
Adam Gour
Blog Post for #MAD405