My husband's Groupon account was hacked a few weeks back. The robber bought two Samsung phones for $500 each and had them shipped to an address in Stockton, CA. I noticed the charges when auditing the monthly statement. AMEX was awesome in immediately reversing the charges.

AMEX Plat - chip/signature card - was used at Victoria's Secret for $89. Called AMEX and they are investigating the charge. New card coming tomorrow next day air. They did not alert me, but as always, they provide some of the best customer service in resolving the matter.

In which country is your card issued, and in which country did the fraud occur? Cards issued in the USA are Chip & Signature, card issued elsewhere may be Chip & PIN. Both are often still processed as swipe cards in the USA, which means the presence of the chip is irrelevant.

I presumed that he was outside the US when I read that post, but some Americans (and banks/credit unions, unfortunately) do seem to use those terms interchangeably. Probably for the best I suppose.

Actually you are correct. The card is not chip/pin but rather chip/signature since it is issued in the USA. I'm guessing the card number got stolen somewhere.

thieves use a low level test of the card - KFC or self serve gas station -to see if the card has been cancelled. it is easy for them to "get away" if it has been blocked

AMEX card numbers and expiration date are not random - any crook can determine those if they know the date the previous card for that account holder was cancelled due to faud so you could, in theory, keep finding out the new number every time the old one is cancelled. The trick is getting the first one cancelled.

There was an article on this online somewhere, a quick google should find it (on a restricted connection so I can't right now).

That being said, AMEX fraud department is amazing. The whole process was very painless and intuitive when someone tried to buy J tickets on my card ~3 years ago.

My one experience with AmEx's fraud department was a while ago. Back then I had to HUCA in order to get someone who could see the pending fraudulent charge; the first CSR tried to claim it was a phishing text message/email that I had received despite me being able to see the transaction when logged into my account with a browser. That did not leave a good taste in my mouth at all, though it did get resolved after the second phone call.

Hopefully things have improved in that regard since then (and it sounds like it may have).

AmEx fraud purchase..
 

AmEx how do they know?? On Monday I was on DAL flight 275 DTW to NRT. I bought WiFi Gogo pass using my platinum card. Not even 5 hours after landing in Tokyo. I get a call from AmEx for 7 fraud online purchases. Has anyone been in the same situation after purchasing WiFi onboard an unsecured network on an airplane. I'm skeptical that my card # was stolen while purchasing the Gogo WiFi. AmEx voided all charges and reissued me a new card.

The Gogo WLAN on the planes is not secure, but the online transaction to purchase the access is encrypted, so I doubt your card number was compromised during that.

As for Amex fraud detection, in my limited experience with one of my cards, it works superbly well.

The theft could have happened weeks or months ago.

My Plat was compromised this week. Was contacted at 1 am by fraud detection when someone tried to run a $1200 charge through apple. I suspect it was a gas station purchase, as I otherwise use this card only for airline tix and FHR bookings. (And I only used the Plat for gas to redeem an AMEX offer for ExxonMobil . . . that turned out to be a really bad deal).

Taking AMEX forever to get me a replacement card.

My American Express card was also compromised this week, with a fraudulent attempted purchase from Apple also. I don't believe American Express is to blame, as there have been some recent scary large data breaches such as with Equifax and Alteryx. I have reason to believe that my email address and phone number were also part of the data set compromised/stolen. So far, American Express has been good to deal with toward resolving my account with them. Beware of phishing emails that appear to be coming from Apple with titles such as "Learn more about your new Apple product". With that said, this thread is about American Express Fraud prevention. The recent data breaches will require even more sophisticated security, as current measures may not always be adequate.