CONSUMER ALERT!

I just got back from the most incredible visit with my husband. After almost 5 weeks apart, just being back in his arms was all it took. I'm surprised my Contractor's haven't offered to fly me out to Cali sooner? Maybe they will in the future based on the marked improvement in attitude since getting to spend 4 blissful days with my hubby!

Since it's late and I have an early morning meeting... I must make this brief. Here's my consumer alert...

While I was out there we spent Saturday night in San Francisco. That night we went to the moview and afterwards grabbed an extremely late "dinner" at a chain restaurant. After sleeping in on Sunday morning, we went to grab some lunch only to discover that Justin didn't have his credit card! Hmmm... Then we realized that the waitress didn't give it back to him the night before. Uh oh. So we drive back to the restaurant and are so grateful when we find out they still have our card. Then this evening Justin gets a call from our credit card company asking about some "suspicious activity". I would just like to say that since Justin has been living so far away, I have been paranoid about identity theft and I have been checking our online banking information 3 times/week. I had just checked it last night and everything looked good...

So Justin called me and I logged onto our account and WOAH!!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? Someone had gone to town making online charges against our credit card today. When I went back and closer scrutinized our credit card bill and I found a fraudulent $2 charge for Sunday afternoon to some fast food place... someone was testing the water to see if the card was declared missing. Then today they started with a $1 charge (testing the water again) before charging $3,150 to our credit card. No, I'm not joking. Justin got right on contacting the merchants and several of the "charges pending" promptly canceled the orders and tomorrow we get to talk w/ the fraud department of our credit card company and possibly file a police report. Fortunately none of the charges went through but it still really freaked me out. I can't believe someone wrote down our credit card number and did this. The thing is, this is a felony and President Bush passed a new law in 2004 mandating a 2 year prison sentence for anyone who commits these crimes. All that for $3,150? By the way, they used Pay Pal to make the charges... also makes it harder to trace it (I imagine).

LESSON LEARNED: If you EVER misplace your credit card, report it missing!!! The possible alternative is not worth your time, energy or emotions. Make the call and declare it missing. Most credit card companies will overnight you a replacement card for free.