kirkg@uw-june (Kirk Glerum) (03/02/84)
I have a VISA card, and I'm wondering why no one's ever bought a VCR or
something with it by phone. Every time I use the silly thing, I'm letting
the sales clerk get ahold of my name, my card number, and its expiration date,
which coincidentally are the exact things needed to buy something via those
800 numbers. Now I suppose that if someone were to rack up a few grand on me,
I could perhaps find out the address the gear's been sent to, but they could
have moved or something. My question is: why doesn't this stuff happen all
the time? Finally, my card's one of those damn gold ones (of which none of
its supposed advantages has ever been apparent - they still look me up in their
stupid books or call some stupid number), which would make me a more likely
target. Is this a reasonable paranoia?
Kirk Glerum
...decvax!microsoft!uw-beaver!uw-june!kirkgron@brl-vgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (03/03/84)
American Express evidently had problems with people reading the numbers off postpaid reply cards. They sent out notices asking cardmembers to be careful with their numbers and when you see AMEX boxes on postpaid cards, they ask you to put the whole thing in an envelope. -Ron
andrew@orca.UUCP (Andrew Klossner) (03/04/84)
"I have a VISA card, and I'm wondering why no one's ever bought
a VCR or something with it by phone. Every time I use the
silly thing, I'm letting the sales clerk get ahold of my name,
my card number, and its expiration date, which coincidentally
are the exact things needed to buy something via those 800
numbers. Now I suppose that if someone were to rack up a few
grand on me, I could perhaps find out the address the gear's
been sent to, but they could have moved or something. My
question is: why doesn't this stuff happen all the time?"
Fear not, there are banking rules in place to protect the consumer, at
least for VISA/Mastercard.
When a mail-order company submits a credit card charge based on an
order received through the mail or over the phone, they are not able to
have the customer sign the slip. If the slip is not signed, the bank
is not obligated to honor the charge. All the customer has to do when
faced with an unauthorized telephone charge is to tell the bank that
there was no authorizing signature and request that the charge be
canceled. The merchant finds out about this by receiving a note from
the bank stating that the charge was not honored and that the
merchant's checking account has already been debited for the necessary
funds.
Of course, if it's a legitimate charge, the merchant will probably come
after you with a civil complaint.
Fortunately, none of this happens very much. Mail order consumers, at
least those who purchase software, seem to be an honest lot. While
running my mail-order company I submitted about a hundred credit card
slips without signatures (taking a chance in each case), and never got
burned. I also honored personal checks immediately, rather than wait
for them to clear, and again never got burned.
The times that I did get burned were when large companies sent purchase
orders. We quickly developed a policy of requiring payment in advance,
even from agencies of the federal government.
-- Andrew Klossner (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew) [UUCP]
(orca!andrew.tektronix@rand-relay) [ARPA]dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (03/04/84)
~| From: kirkg@uw-june (Kirk Glerum)
~| I have a VISA card, and I'm wondering why no one's ever bought a VCR or
~| something with it by phone. Every time I use the silly thing, I'm letting
~| the sales clerk get ahold of my name, my card number, and its expiration date,
~| which coincidentally are the exact things needed to buy something via those
~| 800 numbers. Now I suppose that if someone were to rack up a few grand on me,
~| I could perhaps find out the address the gear's been sent to, but they could
~| have moved or something. My question is: why doesn't this stuff happen all
~| the time? Finally, my card's one of those damn gold ones (of which none of
~| its supposed advantages has ever been apparent - they still look me up in their
~| stupid books or call some stupid number), which would make me a more likely
~| target. Is this a reasonable paranoia?
You don't have to be concerned; without your signature, the credit
grantor (the bank) won't get very far in trying to get money from you
for something you didn't pay for. If the goods were actually shipped
to your address, of course, the bank has much more of a case.
The vendors and banks, who are the ones really at risk of this kind of
fraud, have the protection (in most cases) of an address to go after.
Also, I believe the vendor may be able to check with VISA that the
address they are sending the product to is the one on the card (please
correct me on this, anyone who knows for sure).
If you think about who you're giving your card number to, the chances
of *your* card being picked for fraud are rather low. Those same clerks
gets hundreds of such numbers every day, so the chances of a dishonest
one choosing yours are rather low.
Dave Sherman
Toronto
--
{allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsrgv!daveseifert@ihuxl.UUCP (D.A. Seifert) (03/05/84)
RE: someone with your credit card number, exp date, and name
ordering goodies for themselves
Seems like it would be possible for the mail-order company
to check with the credit card company to see that the
addresses match. They could refuse to ship goods to
an address other than the 'official' address given by
the credit card company.
--
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/_____\ Have you hugged your beagle today?
/_______\ Snoopy
|___|
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