A week ago, my credit card was charged with over $4,000 of fraudulent activities. This occurred due to a “merchant database leak” as I was told by my credit card company (CitiBank). Now, the implications of something like this would be grim for most people, but as I am currently a college student attempting to build up my credit history, I’m slightly more sensitive to things like this. I had only just acquired the card, my first, during the summer of 2007 while I was interning in Manhattan. This being my first credit card, my credit score is extremely vulnerable due to the basic fact that with a shorter history any outliers can affect the average to a much higher degree.
So, I have been actively contacting CitiBank to make sure that my credit history is restored to its former pristine self, as well as having the $4,000+ in fraudulent charges removed from my statement. During this process I had to recite several times to a representative over the phone which activities on my card were fraudulent. In my eyes this was pretty obvious as there was a triplet of $800.00 charges at a Wal-Mart in Arkansas which were made on a Friday. Unless I was intoxicated to such a degree that I unknowingly flew to Arkansas, spend $2,400 at a Wal-Mart, and then somehow awoke in my own bedroom in Erie, PA the subsequent morning then I am pretty sure that those charges were not mine. The same can be said for the $2,000+ in charges which were made to my card in Tennessee, on a Wednesday school night. Who in Tennessee does not question a $576 purchase at Victoria’s Secret without a valid form of identification? I can only hope that this was all done online and that Victoria’s Secret’s central warehouse ships out of Collierville, TN.
Now, all this leads up to my central point: Why, after giving various forms of identification over the phone to my bank, is the quickest way for me to remove the fraudulent charges from my account to be sent a paper copy of my statement in question, which I then have to circle with a pen the charges which I say are fraudulent and then sign the bottom of the form and mail it back? After giving my address, social security number, account number, password, is it not logical that if I can tell a representative over the phone specifically which charges were not mine on my credit card they could then pass off this information to their credit fraud bureau? Why instead make this process into a possibly 1 month long process of waiting for and returning snail mail?
It seems to me that the situation could easily be alleviated through the use of secure PDF forms. The statement in question could be emailed to me in seconds (password locked with an encryption key which would be told to me over the phone by the representative, making it extremely secure), upon its reception I could simply circle the charges on the PDF and digitally sign at the bottom of the document and send it back to the bank. This whole process would take 5 minutes depending on the competency of the representative on the phone and how well the customer is familiar with Adobe Acrobat and computers in general. I guess that’s what I think would be logical in this day and age, or maybe it’s just my dream scenario (possibly the dream scenario of anyone born after 1985, especially since we know that what I have proposed is 100% possible to do). But, in the end here I am awaiting to receive a paper copy of my statement while my credit card is maxed out with its APR climbing above 28% and it already having accrued a $39 “credit limit reached” fee.
Once all of this is resolved I will certainly be checking around to see if this is the norm for other credit card providers, most likely CitiBank will not be handling my account after that point.
