Got a call on my machine to call citicard fraud dept
"have you ever used egghead.com?"
me - no
"we're cancelling your card and issuing a new one because of possible fraud from the (weeks ago) hacker thing (okay this isn't really a quote but a paraphrase)"
me- how long will I be without a cc - this is the only one I use
"we're sending it by mail"
me- you mean I have to be without it for 5 -7 days?
"well we could overnight it"
but I need to use it in the next few days- couldn't you just pretend I didn't call back so promptly and I'll call back in a few days OR couldn't you leave this open even with a low limit until I get the new one?
"we can't do that your card had already been closed"
how come I just charged at two restaurants in the two hours before I called you
"I can't disclose why some transactions went through"
THIS IN FACT WAS A LIE - I called to speak to customer service about this and just casually asked when my account had shown a notation to close it - she looked "oh that was about 4 minutes ago"

It is obviously costing them a lot of money to close all these accounts - btw this just apples to citibank but MAY apply to other because I told them I could understand if they had taken immediate action but this was weeks later, no evidence of fraud, and why couldn't they give the customer a few days transition since they had taken weeks to do anything. I was told they had to wait for Visa to tell them what they could do and visa just notified them they would allow them to close all the accounts - which apparently took weeks (wouldn't any fraud have been more likely BEFORE it became such public knowledge about the break in?)

No one I spoke to could (?was allowed to) do anything about cs, when I spoke to a supervisor and mentioned that I might have to close my account if this was their idea of customer service the reply i got was "when you are ready to close your account you can do it online or call us" - I would have felt better if she had said - gee I'm sorry I'm not empowered to do anything but if you have to do that.... (I've had the acct for years - but maybe they don't make enough money from me because I always pay my bills in full and on time )

This means - any ongoing bill payments have to be notified (for me a charity that I have authorized to do monthly charges), etc
What if I had been out of the country and I didn't return their call right away - good reason to always have a back up cc (of course), there are lots of other scenarios but you can do them.

I'm just trying to give people who might be in this situation a heads up - sorry this is so long
BTW also messes up my c2it account (at least for a while) because this is the ONLY card I can use to send cash without having it be a cash advance
Imagine how much we will all end up paying in extra charges when the bank try to recoup their costs of millions of card cancellations and reissues(as well as the costs of fraudulant activity if any)!

In the future, try to avoid talking to banks and other such institutions. Always write down what you want to say and either fax it or e-mail it. In response to a message on your machine you could have faxed to them that you are out of town or something like that, so could they kindly write down what they want and send it to you. Such method gives you time that you may need to take appropriate action. After all, it is not a life and death situation.

nevermind

A similar thing happened to my wife about a year ago with Discover Card. We had just used the card at a gas station; got home with a message to call the fraud unit. Our number had been "posted on the internet". They already had the gas station charge, closed the account while we were on the phone, and it took 10 days to get another one. It sounds like the procedures they used were similar to citicard.

On a more upside, back in 1999 I bought a ticket on Northwest on the internet. Two days later they sent me an email that they were accidentally using an insecure server rather than a secure server, but there was probably no breach of security. But in apology, I got 4000 bonus miles.

Yes sosafan- this is actually what I thought they were calling about because a few months ago I charged gas then went to charge something and the card had a message to call the cc co for author - once they made sure it was me there was no problem. Apparently outside kiosk gas are a big problem because it is common for a thief to try a card there first to see if it works before they go on to charge other stuff (according the the cc co), since I had just purchased gas (altho not paid at an outside kiosk) I thought this was happening again - but I was wrong...

Just had this happen to me but in a slightly different version. I got a letter from Citi stating they had reason to believe my credit card had been used fraudulently. I immediately called them and asked what was going on. I was told that there had been some sort of hacking into egghead.com and they thought my card might have been used illegally as a result. I had the current bill in front of me and there was nothing on it that looked unusual to me so I told her I would like to know what more they had. She said there was nothing showing but that the charge to look for was from Global Telecom. Well I left it at that and, of course, the next month's statement (1/6/01), lo and behold, there was a charge for Global Telecom, Moscow, Rus and noted Transferred from prior account number. I called them and asked why they hadn't told me when I called before that this charge was on my account. I knew it had to be because it was from 12/15 and it was after that time that I had contacted them. She had no answer except to tell me to close the account. I explained that this was Monday and I was leaving Friday for London and I needed that card. I did have other cards but I wanted those miles. She had it sent overnight and on Wednesday morning my new card was delivered.

I'm still getting notices from them. I just got another form to fill out. To the best of my knowledge I never gave out my credit card number to egghead.com so how they got it is beyond me. My real problem came when I tried to cross the Whitestone Bridge today. I forgot that I had my E-Zpass on this card so of course it's closed and they couldn't replenish. Luckily I was squeezed into a cash lane that also took E-Zpass so I just paid but can you imagine the chaos if I had been in the E-Zpass only lane It would not have been pretty.

Anyhow, the reason for all this rambling is to let you know exactly what the charge is they are looking for. And you will notice I got no call, just a letter. Also when I called in response to the letter I was allowed to continue using the card because my previous month's statement didn't show anything irregular. All the while the info was right there at Citi. I would have appreciated them sharing the news with me at that time. Maybe I would have remembered to change that E-Zpass account.

Is this any way to run a credit card company?

Speaking as a Manhattan resident, it seems to me that the true moral of this story is never to use the Whitestone Bridge.

chrism

this is exactly my point, but with a slightly different twist - in my case there had been NO evidence of any fraud (I know I follow my acct on line most days) and they made it clear they had awaited approval from Visa to get permission to close ALL the accounts. Since there was no evidence of fraud I'm awaiting what I have forgotten that is automatically charged (like your toll issue) that will crop up when I expect it least. I hope no one has there mortgage payment made that way!

I talked with my credit card company last week, too (not Citibank, First USA, who has the UA Visa). They called me because of two questionable charges, though one was a charge that appears monthly for the same amount. The other charge was for Expedia, as I had bid on a hotel room. They mentioned the Egghead thing, too, as I did buy a laptop from them a while back. They didn't cancel my card and reissue a new one, though. I have a number of accounts that automatically bill to my Visa each month, and that would be one big pain to have to notify all of them, let alone being without a card for a few days.

Same thing happened to me.

Fraudulent charge: Global Telecom, Moscow, Russia, 278 Rubles = $10.05

Got call from issuing bank, MBNA, that new card was on the way. In the meantime, they left the old one open up to $1,000 in total charges.

Soon, I had the new one in hand.

This was a MasterCard, not Visa.

With all the constant offers of free credit cards, why would someone only have one card. I see no reason, other than an personal inability to leave it in your pocket until you really need it. These type of issues will happen more and more. I carry three cards, always. It costs me nothing.

I guess I'd like to chime in here in defense of the card companies. I estimate that I've made almost 10,000 cc transactions in the last 30 years. Not counting fees, I can only remember 5 incorrect charges, none of them the fault of the credit card company. Two were for only one cent each, and the other three were eventually resolved.
They correctly process tranactions better than 99.9% of the time. In comparison, I get my frequent flyer miles from airlines about 95% of the time, and from rental car companies only 50% of the time.
I'm sure that credit card fraud is a tricky thing. It's in all of our interests that it be kept to a minimum.

The thing that annoys me about EZPass is that to change the card the tolls are charged to, you need to send them a letter, you can't do it by phone.

Tute84--Why did you have to tell me that? I thought I could just call them tomorrow and fix it on the phone. I'm flying off to HKG on Wednesday at the crack of dawn (8:30 am and I live an hour and a half in the best of times north of JFK). That's why I have to cross the Whitestone Bridge, RichG. There was a time when I lived in Queens and this sort of thing didn't happen but then too I didn't travel or drive back then either. You take the good with the bad I guess.

Chris

NoStressHere - one reason for limiting the number of credit cards you carry is that banks treat "available credit" as a liability in figuring your assets and liabilities on a loan application. For example if you have 4 platinum cards with a 20K credit line on each the bank will count that as 80K credit card liability even if you have zero balances. It makes sense from the bank's point of view; you could charge 80K the day after the loan is approved.

I agree that having only one card is silly; I charge everything on my UA Mastercard but I do have a backup card just in case.