Banks without a clue

Kasia is not the only one with a gripe about stupid banks.

Credit card fraud is a huge problem, and the card issues are getting pretty aggressive about calling consumers to verify purchases that might be "suspicious", but I am astonished how dumb their systems are for this. I suppose there are people who use their credit cards once a year for some special purpose, but I am not one of them. I use my cards all the time, and it's hard for me to keep track of all the dollar amounts in my head.

So, when I got the call tonight for a purchase of $1016.73 for "Business Services", I wasn't sure what it was. Who was the merchant? "We don't know". OK, then were was the charge from (I had just made a purchase about that size from France). "We don't know: just 'business services'".

This is so dumb I can hardly see straight: these people have invested a fortune in computerized electronic transaction systems (and I have written a lot of software to talk to them), but they don't know who they're sending my money to? All I can do is shrug and say "Well, that sounds about right" and move on. This doesn't provide very much fraud protection at all.

And it's not that I am unanxious to help: I've had two of my cards used fraudulently in the last six months, and since both (relatively small) transactions were out of the country, I had to close the accounts and reopen them. It's a huge pain, and I'm happy to help keep my costs down by busting fraud.

But this is just dumb.

Posted by Steve at June 27, 2003 09:54 PM | TrackBack