Credit Card Compromised - Follow-up

Date Stamp:: 2 October 2008
#

I mentioned a little while ago that my credit card was compromised. Since then I’ve been issued a new card. This follow-up looks at a few things that may help someone who has this happen to them in the future.

(This post was written in August, and I forgot to post it).

Customer service is something that I think most organisations could do better – and from this situation, what needs to be improved by my bank is the consistency/accuracy of their message.

When I was first informed by the bank that the card had been compromised, I was told that I would have to do a few things when issued a new card – in particular fix up automatic bill payments. Fair enough, I only had two regular bills coming out of my credit card, so not too much trouble. They also advised that automatic payments would be accepted for a 30 day grace period. I didn’t question this, I figured that they would be able to identify the difference between someone using my card number vs an automatic payment. I also realised, there are some online services that may try to bill my card in the future, which will get rejected: the iTunes music store for example.

However, as a later representative advised, automatic payments are not given a grace period. So, despite ringing my private health insurance as soon as I got the new card, they had already tried to take out the monthly premium after the old card had been cancelled and before I had the new card. So, I later received a letter to advise that they had stopped my coverage until I rectified the payment. Poor customer service – the representative I spoke to when I advised my new card details (and what had happened), didn’t check then and there whether any payments had been refused.

Another problem was that the credit card statement that had finished before the card was cancelled had not been paid. And when the automatic payment to transfer from my savings account tried to make the payment, it couldn’t because the card no longer existed. Therefore, I got charged a late payment fee (it got reimbursed after I called).

But, because I hadn’t been issued a statement for the new card, I couldn’t set up it’s automatic payment.

The other problem was that my credit card was the registration for Internet banking so an automatic transfer from another account (not the credit card) failed because the transfer was happening under my internet banking account which had been suspended.

The bank’s response my requests to find out how the card had been compromised was also interesting. The first time I asked, Rep. A only gave me an example. The next time, fixing something else, Rep. B told me that I should have been told by another section. Rep. C in the other section said that I could not be told any details. Yet, Rep. D responding to an email by phone told me that it had happened at an Australian merchant, in my local area, who had been skimmed – the details didn’t quite fit, as she said it was not someone at the merchant and could not be avoided – which doesn’t really fit Skimming.