Thanks for pointing out that I'll need to notify the vendors where I have automatic charges. Actually, the Amex agent informed me that I'll have to do that. Not looking forward to it, since both providers (MCI and my cell phone company) have long periods "on hold." Got the new card today, so I'll probably call late tonight.

OK, since a couple of you asked, here are the details of the attempted fraud.

On Wednesday, I received a Fedex from Coach (handbags, leather goods, etc.) containing only a postcard saying they had been trying to contact me and to call them about my recent order. I thought, what a waste of money sending Fedex Priority Overnight when I hadn't placed an order. So I called first thing yesterday morning. They needed confirmation that I placed an order through their catalog because the billing address was different from the shipping address. Of course, I was shocked and asked what the shipping address was. She said she wasn't allowed to tell me.

I then asked the amount of the charge. $913.78!! By the way, she offered that Amex authorized the charge, but it is Coach's policy to not ship without verification from the cardholder when the two addresses don't match. So that's why it was attempted fraud. No charge was actually ever made.

I then immediately called Amex and reported the incident. I asked them to read to me all the charges that had come through in the past week (the attempted fraud occurred on 10/25). All the charges read to me were legitimate charges that I made. So anyway, Amex immediately deactivated my account number and the new card arrived today.

Now, for some irony. At 8:00 a.m. today I attempted to use my Visa card (only use it where Amex isn't accepted) since I was temporarily without my Amex. The Visa card was denied. So now I became really worried that I've been hit big time, as my used credit is only a minute percentage of my credit line and I always pay my account on time.

As soon as I got to work, I called the Visa issuing bank and was told that everything was fine with my account but that they were having computer issues with expiration dates on cards not matching the expiration date in their system. This is really strange because I used the Visa card yesterday after the Amex was deactivated. Oh well, the good news is that my Visa hasn't been hit as well.

I told the Visa rep. that the timing of this was awful, considering what I learned just yesterday about my Amex account.

So that's the story