It happened again.
My credit card number was stolen again. This time it was the American Express card, a first. (In the past it was always Visa). The good news is that as usual I received an alert from the credit card company based on suspicious activity. It was a single transaction that set-off the alarm bells this time. I will say I’m impressed with the credit card companies’ algorithms to detect potential fraud. In each case they correctly identified fraud and the card issuer ended up alerting me before I noticed it on a statement. That’s great for them since it limits their losses.
I was also impressed with the American Express customer experience throughout the incident. It included the initial notification of potential fraud, the confirmation of a new card issue, the confirmation of the new card delivery, and the reminder to check merchants which may have the card on file which included a list of potential merchants.
The notification.
The first alert was an email notification that there might be potential fraud. I’m leery of emails from any of my financial services providers as I always suspect a phishing attack. So I called the number on the back of my card to check the account. Sure enough the email was legitimate. After answering a few questions about recent transactions, my account was closed and they send a new card via overnight mail. I guess since it was peak shopping season they wanted to make sure I didn’t go anywhere without their card in my wallet!
The confirmation.
Then I received two emails confirming that a new would be on my doorstep soon.
The follow-up.
As a great follow-up to the experience I received an email showing specific merchants from my purchase history that might have my previous card number on record. While I had already updated or cancelled most of these, there were a couple that I had not thought about. Nice touch!
