Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Personal Violation

I was enjoying my nice quiet time (aka - timmy's nap time) this afternoon, when the phone rang. It was Wal-Mart.com wanting to confirm that Todd, my husband, made 3 seperate digital camera purchases (about $400 each) where the shipping address did not match the billing address - ummmm....NO! Of course, I immediately called Citibank to report this - argh! Citibank was very good about it and gave us all the information we needed. However, they only showed 2 fraudelant purchases on our account, so I called Wal-Mart.com back and asked about all 3 purchases. 1 of the purchases went through and is being shipped right now. In order to get the shipping address, I have to contact the local police department and they need to fax a subpeona to Wal-Mart.com to have that information released - so, yes, I called the police department! A nice police officer came to my door and had me fill out a written statement. What I had to write was so long and detailed, that the officer left it with me to complete. I did it during Pinky Dinky Doo, then we took a little drive into town and dropped it off at the police station. When I dropped it off, I was told that I need to contact all my credit card companies and let them know what happened and to get a credit report. Also, most of these things are overseas, so they probably won't ever know who did it. - Annoying, but I think it's not a case of someone stealing all our our information - and here's why....

Todd and I are both still in possesion of our credit cards. In order to make a purchase at Wal-Mart.com, you need to not only enter your credit card number, but you need to enter the 3 digit security code on the back. The only way for someone to get that information is to actually hold the card. The only place that happens is when we use the card to pay at a restaurant - where they actually take the card away from the table. So, if that is true, then it means that someone in this little area of NH is stealing credit card numbers. The questions are - will we ever know who did this? Will the person be caught? Will the police department follow up with us? And, will we be in the newspaper's police log next week next to the complaint about a dog barking???

Silver Linings:
Can you imagine that I will find not one, but four in this little annoyance???
1) Timmy got to meet a police officer.
2) He got to see a police car up close and personal, and see the lights flash.
3) Now, we will only go out to dinner when we actually have the cash to pay for it - this will be much better on our budget!
4) Who knew Wal-Mart.com would take this step and call us when they saw something a shady. I like it and am so thankful that they notified us!

4 comments:

NH Family Times Editor said...

Wow! That is terrible! Can you track where you have eaten out and used your credit cards? I can't help but think if the person had'nt gotton greedy (multiple purchases) they might have gotton away with it.

Our motto is "No Credit (cards) is Good Credit". I think we will stick with that. But it could happen with our debit card.......

Anonymous said...

omg how awful. I'm glad WalMart alerted you, for sure.

I've gotten into just using my debit and taking CASH out for the week and paying that way.

Margo said...

Atleast you're positive enough to find the sliver linings!

What a bummer.

Unknown said...

What a headache! I have to say I think you handled this a lot better than I would have. Silver lining? I would have been too furious to see the silver lining.

In regards to dear Timmy saying fart: LOL! Sorry, I shouldn't laugh. But welcome to the world of being at the mercy of your child's verbalizations. He would have learned the word from you if not from someone else. You could start saying "gas" instead of "fart." Just please no cutesy names like toot or stinky. I'm of the philosophy that a vagina is a vagina and a penis is a penis and a fart, well, it's a fart.