The customer service agent confirmed that there had been fraudulent charges on the card. It was getting uncomfortably close to the hour I needed to start walking to the theater. But by then I did not want to hang up and redial/redial. When the call went through, a recorded greeting said, “Yes, operator, this number accepts collect calls.” Well, rats: I was paying 17 cents a minute for a call that should have been free. So I went through the considerable rigamarole of using a hostel pay phone with a prepaid calling card this required dialing a bunch of numbers, speaking with the international operator, and then dialing all the numbers again. First I tried calling collect – three times at two different numbers – but none of the calls were accepted. Thus I decided to use the card phone numbers, which turned into a half-hour project. Not going to happen, especially since I was using a WiFi connection while on the road. What made it look even more suspicious was the fact that when I clicked on the link provided, the first thing I was asked to do was enter my credit card number and my Social Security number. I was later told that there are numerous offices for that particular branch of customer service. Initially I wondered if the e-mail were one of those phishing scams, particularly since the number given did not match the one on my card. The odd thing is that the transactions were physical transactions, according to the card fraud department, so whoever got my number must also have one of those card-making machines. Designer clothing, maybe, or at least some of those M&Ms with your photograph on them.īut no: Wal-Mart it was, for $90 each time. You’d think people would want to do something cooler than a discount retailer.
Somebody had gotten hold of my number and used it twice. My immediate thought was that the company had simply forgotten that I was traveling, even though I’d notified them. A credit card issuer e-mailed me to warn of potentially fraudulent activity.
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