Have You Noticed? Are There Small Unknown Charges in Your Monthly Credit Card Statement?
When you get your monthly statement, do you quickly scan it, glance at the list of new charges, then look at the total and lay the statement in the bills-to-be-paid pile? Is this scenario true for you? Do you take the time to examine the individual charges? This might prove to be very prudent.
Customer Services Grace Period If you find a fraudulent charge in the list you should call customer services immediately.
Although many credit cards allow 30 days for the card holder to report fraudulent charges and some allow up to 60 days, the chances are that if you don't report these charges at the time you read the statement you might just forget them over 30 or 60 days.
Then those bad charges become part of your overall credit card debt and are your responsibility to pay.
The credit card company gives you this grace period to report any questionable charges, if you don't they just get more money in interest and you have to pay more.
Small Charge Scam Recently a scam was reported where small charges are placed on credit cards.
These charges can be less than a dollar.
The scammer might do this for thousands of credit cards and in total make a good bit of money ripping off innocent card holders.
The charges may vary from month to month possibly because they have less of a chance of detection.
After several months some victims might even think these charges are legitimate - if they notice them at all.
A Threshold? Some people seem to have a threshold - they do notice them but consider them too small to worry about.
For example: one scam involved a website selling photos.
The photos were of good quality and were priced right giving one the appearance of a legitimate website.
But in reality, the credit card numbers collected at the website were used in the scam - small charges of less than 10 dollars were placed on the cards without delivering a product.
One victim of this scam said she did not see the value in calling customer services for a questionable charge of less than 10 dollars.
Maybe her time was too valuable? Makes one wonder how many people would agree with this? Do the scammers know of this 'threshold'? Matter of Principle I think it is a matter of principle - I do not want somebody taking money from me for who knows what purpose - most likely something I would definitely not approve of.
So any questionable charges I'll call in to customer services.
Another factor Is it that many people don't understand credit card bill well enough to see that there is a problem? In this case, one should take the time to thoroughly understand the monthly statement.
After all, it is only logical that if you are responsible for paying your credit card debt, every penny of it should be only your debt.
Customer Services Grace Period If you find a fraudulent charge in the list you should call customer services immediately.
Although many credit cards allow 30 days for the card holder to report fraudulent charges and some allow up to 60 days, the chances are that if you don't report these charges at the time you read the statement you might just forget them over 30 or 60 days.
Then those bad charges become part of your overall credit card debt and are your responsibility to pay.
The credit card company gives you this grace period to report any questionable charges, if you don't they just get more money in interest and you have to pay more.
Small Charge Scam Recently a scam was reported where small charges are placed on credit cards.
These charges can be less than a dollar.
The scammer might do this for thousands of credit cards and in total make a good bit of money ripping off innocent card holders.
The charges may vary from month to month possibly because they have less of a chance of detection.
After several months some victims might even think these charges are legitimate - if they notice them at all.
A Threshold? Some people seem to have a threshold - they do notice them but consider them too small to worry about.
For example: one scam involved a website selling photos.
The photos were of good quality and were priced right giving one the appearance of a legitimate website.
But in reality, the credit card numbers collected at the website were used in the scam - small charges of less than 10 dollars were placed on the cards without delivering a product.
One victim of this scam said she did not see the value in calling customer services for a questionable charge of less than 10 dollars.
Maybe her time was too valuable? Makes one wonder how many people would agree with this? Do the scammers know of this 'threshold'? Matter of Principle I think it is a matter of principle - I do not want somebody taking money from me for who knows what purpose - most likely something I would definitely not approve of.
So any questionable charges I'll call in to customer services.
Another factor Is it that many people don't understand credit card bill well enough to see that there is a problem? In this case, one should take the time to thoroughly understand the monthly statement.
After all, it is only logical that if you are responsible for paying your credit card debt, every penny of it should be only your debt.
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