An idea for credit card companies investigating fraud incidents

This past summer my Visa credit card number was stolen. I was out of town when I received a call from my credit card company asking about suspicious activity. There were charges appearing from a state that I was not vacationing in and where I do not reside. Thankfully they had already shutdown the card. I just needed to review the chargers with them and state which charges I did not make. They mailed me an affidavit in the mail to sign stating that I did not make the charges and issued me a new account number.

That process worked well and was easy to follow. I appreciated the fact that they were proactive and stopped the fraudster from committing additional violations using my credit. However once it was over, I had no further contact with the credit card company about the matter.

As I think about it, there is an opportunity here for credit card companies to help prevent future fraud incidents. Well, maybe not completely prevent, but at least reduce the likelihood of ocurrance.

I consider myself to be pretty good at keeping up with consumer advice about how to protect my financial matters from crooks. But in this case, my credit card company didn’t share any information with me about how they think the fraud happened. Maybe they didn’t know. But giving customers a bit of fraud education when they are victim’s is in the best interest of the account holder and the credit card company. Maybe I made a mistake I could learn from and not repeat.

At the end of the day I didn’t lose a dime. But I could in the future if I am a victim to another identity theft crime. I assume the credit card company had to write-off the fraudulent charges so they were the loser. My suggestion to credit card companies is to educate the consumer on what they could do different not only from a general list of best practices but with any specific information about their particular incident.