Weekly Roundup: My Credit Card Was Stolen

Happy Friday Dinks.  It’s definitely a happy Friday for me because I’m off work.  Monday is a holiday up here in Canada and I decided to take a nice little extra long weekend and tack on the Friday.  Isn’t that nice?!  For the first time in a long time I am staying put for my mini vacation.

I usually like to get away whenever I can but I’m happy in our new apartment (we moved last October) and don’t feel the need to rush off every chance I get.  Isn’t it weird how life changes.  A year ago I couldn’t get out of town enough and now I have four days off and I’m staying put – I guess that means I’m finally settling in.

Did anything unusual happen to you this week?

To be honest when I was thinking about today’s weekly roundup I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about because my week has been pretty standard: I spent too much on food (we’ll get into that another day), I avoiding any type of spending on clothes (thank goodness for window shopping) and I bought a ticket to an upcoming conference in NYC (YAY for learning and travelling).  Then  yesterday I got a phone call.

Nick called me at work around 11 am which is a bit unusual because we usually talk on our lunch breaks and not so much during the day.  When I saw his cell phone number flash on my screen of course my heart dropped and I immediately thought something was wrong.  When I answered I didn’t actually expect to hear his voice on the other line, but thankfully I did.

I’m grateful for the credit card security department

He told me that VISA just called and said we need to confirm some unusual charges on the account.  We did go shopping on the weekend and right now our balance is pretty close to the limit since we can only pay it off at the end of the month so I thought maybe our excessive spending triggered a red flag.

We tried to call VISA together but the agent got annoyed at our conference call.  She informed us that their office is open until 10:30 pm and asked us to call back when we were together.  Are they even allowed to do that?

When we both got home from work we called back and the agent asked to verify two transactions: one at a movie theatre in Toronto and another at a hotel in California.  As we are currently in Montreal both of these transactions were fraud.  I’m not sure if anyone is planning a trip to California but don’t stay at the El Cortez hotel because someone there stole my credit card.

Credit card fraud sucks

Of course the agent couldn’t give us the exact location of the hotel or movie theatre claiming she didn’t know.  Well as a bank employee I can tell you that she does know, she just can’t share the information for legal reasons a.k.a. in case I decide to visit the movie theatre or El Cortez hotel and take a baseball bat to someone’s head for stealing my credit card.

To make a long story short even though the fraud was only on Nick’s card both credit cards need to be cancelled and we will receive new ones in approximately seven business days.  It’s a total drag, but at least we got all our shopping done beforehand.

How was your money week?