OK, this is cool [Amex fraud detection]
 

I just bought a wine fridge on Walmart.com. For whatever reason, AmEx thought it was a fraudulent purchase. ABout three seconds after clicking Submit on the website, the AmEx app on my phone beeped with a fraud alert. Simultaneously, the website said the transaction was declined by the card issuer.

I clicked "Yes, I attempted this transaction" on my phone, clicked Submit again on the website, and it went through.

That's how it should work! ^^^

That is pretty impressive, both companies IT backend systems working together for good.

I'm glad this worked out for you, but given that it wasn't a fraudulent charge, I'd argue this isn't how it should work. In a perfect world (and obviously in this regard it isn't) the transaction would have just gone through like normal.

Could the issue have been that yoou were having it shipped to an address other than your billing address?

For whatever reason, Amex seems to flag Walmart.com purchases if you don't shop there frequently... had this happen to me with a purchase that was less than $400, and I've heard similar reports from others.

Years ago I noticed that they flagged electronics purchases.

AmEx tends to flag large alcohol purchases. I wonder if their system thought this was a purchase of alcohol, and not a refrigerator?

mine did the same when I tried to buy an ipad over the x-mas holidays from Walmart. Perhaps walmart online is a high spot for fraud.

They called me about a Walmart.com purchase and I'm glad they did. It was for $8,000 and not mine. I prefer the proactive mgmt. only had it happen once with a charge I wanted to make.

TBH. Amex have never questioned any charges on my card, ever. Its always me that notices them once they hit my account, to there credit they are removed within a couple of hours and I can literally pick a new card up in 2 hours.

Same. Amex have never ever declined a charge. I've never had a fraudulent charge on my Amex either though.

with me they would probably notice that in the past I was only buying 5 liter boxed wine and couldnt determine I needed a refrig with bottle holders

How large is large? I do a lot of alcohol purchases (Liquor stores, micro-breweries, etc..) and they've never flagged me, but maybe they just think I'm a drunk.

They've only called me once about a charge and that was when I was purchasing some airline tickets for relatives (that have a different last name)

I never had Amex question anything before a couple months ago - then, I noticed someone tried to charge about $1000 at Bed, Bath & Beyond over the course of a couple days.

It may also be that I don't think I've ever shopped at walmart.com...and very rarely at Walmart, for that matter.

In any case, clicking Accept on the iPhone app let the charge go through, but they still called me today to ask about it (and apparently blocked my card in the meantime, though I didn't try to buy anything in the interim, so I don't know).

I'm happy they're on the lookout and made it about as painless as possible for me.

Same thing happened to me over the holidays when my wife bought Christmas cards from walmart.com using our Plat. Amex. I didn't mind though. Glad to see they're looking out.

Now Amex offered me something very cool : each time a transaction goes through I get an email. So if transaction is fraudulent (never happened to me yet) I will be able to tell them very fastly.

Spent 10k at jewelry store in Maui while on vacation last month. Charge went through but phone rang on way out the door. Automated call from Amex noting charge and asking if authorized. I know un authorized charges are not my responsibility but like the notification.

Same happened to me today. I appreciate their proactive approach. My father was pick-pocketed in Paris last year (visa card, not amex) and a simple call would have alerted us much earlier. I feel that AmEx is doing the responsible thing and protecting their business by flagging things this fast.

I have never had an issue from buying alcohol in large amounts. Most months half my spend is alcohol (business related, some personal too ;) )

Diners Club in Austria sends a free text message for every single transaction. Even when it is just a hold. Generally a very good service.

Verry funny to see how many charges a Fairmount hotel puts on your card at check-in, before you have even spent anything (room already paid). IIRC I had 4 charges in 3 currencies. :-)

I also like the way that AMEX can blow up my phone, txt message, and email me the second they think anything is wrong. Giving me the ability to quickly reply "Yes it's cool" or "heck no, not me" makes it even better. FWIW Chase just added this to my Presidential Plus Card as well.

American Express notified me to a fraud alert
 

It was within minutes that the card ( JetBlue) which had not been used since December had a purchase attempt at 11:30 pm ET.

I received the email alert and almost deleted it thinking it was SPAM.

So I called the customer service on my card and checked my account online.

They ( he or she) first tried the card on a $9 purchase then when that went through they went for a $1252 Continental flight purchase that didn't.

So I had an alert set at $500 but I have changed all my alerts now down to $100 .
Just so glad that it was caught but worried that most of my purchases on the card were made locally at stores I frequently shop at .
Another store was Amazon.com.

I just want to add that I've been quite impressed with Amex's fraud department. I have a card I use quite regularly and first someone did a $1 donation to Wikipedia then a much larger purchase. I was unaware any of this happened until Amex called me with the fraud alert and then literally the next day I had a new Amex card in my hands.

Ditto on the Kudos. Someone used my card to try and buy a Starbucks' GC in Canada the day I'd been scheduled to take a red-eye to FL, and they'd arranged for my replacement card to be at my hotel when I'd arrived.

I had a recent fraud attempt which the folks in the Fraud department caught very nicely, and denied. Doing my own followup, it became pretty clear that the cause of the fraud was the Target incident.

The main hassle with getting a real fraud alert is that they send you a card with a new number and you have to go through and change all your automatic pay accounts. The last time they helped with this by emailing me a list of those charges that looked to them to be regularly-timed ones.

I had one yesterday for a $4 charge (it was a fee from a Phoenix company for "refueling" my electric car). The charge was fine. Odd that they did this for $4, but they said that somebody could have just been testing the card so better safe than sorry.

My approach is that I asked for an authorized user card with my initials rather than first name. Since it has a different number, i can use this card for auto pay and not worry about having to change numbers if my walking around card is compromised.

Fraud and Walmart
 

Just had to second the comment about a possible correlaton between Walmart and fraud: when my visa debit was skimmed in Hungary/Budapest ~3 years ago (didn't use it for purchases, in my view it had to have been something with the one ATM I used though I can't know for sure) I got the automated call from VISA fraud when it was used twice at Walmarts in coastal Mississippi (between Ocean Springs and Biloxi) - a state I have never been to. So perhaps there is/was a relationship with Walmart being a place stolen card numbers could be successfully used. Perhaps this is a reason walmart (along with Target now, for obvious reasons) are pushing chip-and-PIN cards.

Amex fraud detection software
 

So I somehow managed to get through almost 30 years of never having fraudulent charges on my card and now I've been hit twice in the last two months.

Landed in Paris two months ago and had an email waiting asking "did you make this charge?" for about $500 of cosmetics. Nope. They fedex'ed me a new card to the hotel within a few days. Such a pain to change all your auto-pay stuff.

Since I received the new card, I only used it for a trip to NYC and a trip to London. This weekend I received another "did you make this charge?" email for $48 at a BP gas station in NYC. I'm on the west coast.

Called the regular customer service number and it didn't even go to customer service, they auto-routed me right to the fraud people. They said someone made a $5 charge at KFC in NYC and then followed up with an attempt for $48 in gas that they blocked. Another new card on the way.

Gotta say that Amex sure handles it well. It's an inconvenience but they are about as friendly and good as one could be with taking care of things and getting you a new card asap. I don't think the call took 10 minutes.

The fraud detection software that they use is pretty impressive. I use my card for all kinds of random things all over the world and I'm not at all predictable in the places I charge. Despite this, both times Amex had a bogus charge dialed in instantly after a single attempt, pretty impressive.

I'm in NY regularly, I buy gas all the time and was just at a KFC buying sodas two days ago so these charges were not out of the realm of possibility.

I poured over my NY statement thinking somewhere I went snarfed my card number. I had a bunch of Uber charges which are probably safe, a few taxi and Via charges (nobody handled my card). The only time I handed over my card and it disappeared for a bit was three restaurants and the Element hotel.

Since the card was almost brand-new when I went to NY, if it was someone that copied my card info it had to be one of those three restaurants or the hotel.

I know it's Amex's problem but it's interesting to wonder where it was grabbed. I'm sure the fraudsters were disappointed that all they managed to get off my mythical "black card" was a $5 order at KFC.

Makes me want to just use Apple Pay for everything I can to just have a tokenized payment.

Anyway, impressive detection Amex.

I am not even close to being an international jetsetter. I spend most of my time in the San Francisco Bay Area and Las Vegas, and I have never had a problem making purchases in either place. The last time I went to San Diego, I had no issues either. My only problem with the fraud detection was when I tried to get gas in Los Angeles earlier this year. It was a legitimate purchase on my part, but it set off AMEX's fraud detection software. I quickly verified with them that it was a legitimate purchase, but I found it interesting that THAT was the purchase that triggered a flag. I guess there must be a lot of fraudulent gas purchases in Los Angeles. In the grand scheme of things, a false positive to protect my account is preferable to them missing actual fraudulent charges.

I think Amex still does very well in the fraud detection area. Also the fact you can reach the company during holidays is very nice. I remember on several occasions on world travel I was down to one working card out of three and it was my Amex. I do think other banks are catching up.

One way we could finally prevent all this is move to the European/Canadian system of chip readers at restaurants etc, so our cards never "disappear" to the back room to be swiped and card info stolen.

And yes, agreed on a great fraud detection system!

Fraudulent charges should soon be a thing of the past once chip and pin technology in the US catches up to just about everywhere else.

I haven't had a fraudulent charge on any of my cards in at least 5 years now. The worst was when my visa was compromised three times in the span of 3 months. What annoyed me the most was that my bank didn't catch on to the obviously fraudulent charges. One that stuck out was for nearly a thousand dollars in skateboarding clothes that was shipped to a trailer park in British Columbia! In an odd twist, the UPS charge for the shipping posted a few days prior to the bulk of the charge. I remember sitting looking at my statement scratching my head about a 90$ UPS charge, as I typically use fedex or Canada post. When I called UPS i was able to get the name of the jackass who ordered the stuff where it was shipped to and his phone number. I briefly toyed with the idea of calling the number but thought better of it.

Since switching to chip and pin though, I haven't had a single card compromised. And i do find it mildly annoying having to sign chits whenever I go to the States.

Card account numbers are not necessarily compromised by access to the physical card. Chips will not reduce card-not-present fraud, such as online transactions.

Yap, just had 2 on-line purchases from Argentina on my VISA card. Now on my 5th VISA card in 2 years. Only one on my AMEX about 6 years ago.

Yes, but chip and pin will essentially eliminate the skimmers, which when it comes to credit card fraud are the guys grabbing the lowest hanging fruit. I'd also imagine that up to pretty recently, skimming accounted for the bulk of fraudulently obtained account numbers.

Almost assuredly one of the restaurants. Every time I've had fraudulent charges, it came right after handing over my card to a waiter or waitress who disappeared out of sight with my CC.

i believe mine was stolen once using a boingo hotspot in john wayne airport.

You mean what looked like a boingo hot spot. Unless you had a key logger virus or someone just watching. You can give it many high high tech names but almost 99.% of anything taken via wireless method is via "man in the middle"method not sniffing or "listening"

that could be possible, good point.

but everything seemed normal though as per the regular boingo login process.