Last year someone took Amex CC number and purchased $6000 worth of items at eluxury.com. I then called Amex and they debited the charge immediately.

After that I seriously started to question Amex's practices about approving such high price purchases without my verification. I usually charge a lot to my card but if they noticed a single purchase totalling $6000, I would expect them to contact me for approval.

But what's funny about this situation is that I had never purchased/dealt with eluxury.com, and after the fradaulent charge eluxury stills sends their catalogs to my home. Crazy, no ? I would imagine that most online companies would verify their clients carefully, specially if the cardholder's address doesn't match the shipping address(whether main or alternative address on file) for such a high amount and a first time user.

Verse99, sorry to hear what happened to you and your troubles when trying to use your CC in Ecuador. I'm surprised that you've been asked to provide 2 ID's even for a $10 purchase. I've never had that problem but I do HATE when merchants ask for the cedula(national ID) number, address and phone number.