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Appropo E Solutions and the Digital Age
By Wolf Paulus <wolf@wolfpaulus.com>

Posted Sunday, October 02nd, 2005

Bank of America has some cool online features available for their checking account customers. For instance, they scan every check and you can view them online when looking at your statement. Credit Card Accounts are a different story.
Last night, when checking my Credit Card statement online, I noticed two transactions I couldn't remember.

The amounts are not extraordinary and depending on how much you are using your card, you might consider letting it slip and not spend the time and effort to investigate. Bank of America's online information is not very helpful either; all you are getting is the transaction date, the description shown above, and the amount. Ordering a receipt costs $3 per transaction.

Bank of America - Higher Standards, maybe not.
Google-ing for the terms "DIGITAL AGE and FRAUD" or "APPROPO and FRAUD" lists a couple sites to user forums, confirming my worst fears, I'm once again victim of a credit card scam. Sites like:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14439110 or
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/52/521961/ ,
show lots of users reporting scams concering the same companies in the same date range (mid September), meaning a lot of people know about this - nobody at Bank of America, of course.
When I reported the fraud, everyone pretended to not have heard about those companies or this particular scam. However, I got my account disabled and promised to send me a new card.

Wouldn't it be nice, if after a scam gets exposed, VISA, MC, APEX and the Banks would get-together and invalidate the transactions automatically, not requesting hundreds or even thousands of customers going through all the paperwork trouble, affidavits, etc.
My written suggestion to B of A was answered like this:
"Thank you for your e-mail. I apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced. Thank you for e-mailing us your concerns. (..)
Should you have any further inquiries, please e-mail us again."

Higher Standards, I see ...

--wolf

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Published on: Sunday, October 02nd, 2005  •  Category: [life]
Article URL : http://wolfpaulus.com/journal/life/scam.html