About 4 years ago my wife’s bank card was fraudulently duplicated and used (to withdraw a significant amount of money from a non-branded “white” banking machine), and back then I wrote a post humbly apologizing to TD Bank (aptly named: TD Bank I Apologize) Â saying, that while I dislike their service fees and many of their investment systems annoy me, I must say that their response to that fraud was very good. TD seems quite vigilant with their bank card security.
Yesterday, we saw that the bank security security system is getting even better at detecting frauds, but that fraud is also still going on (even with the new chip technologies, which is  supposed to stop this happening).
My wife and I were out shopping and as we checked out at Sobeys my wife attempted to pay for our groceries with her TD Bank card, she tried twice and got the message “Transaction Denied“, which was very disconcerting (since this is how things started 4 years ago), so I tried my card and it worked just fine (which meant we could also eat!). We rushed home to check out our on-line banking, but no transactions appeared that suggested any problems (and we were not over drafted, which was my other concern), so my wife decided to call the TD Help line.
The first thing that suggested something was very wrong was when my wife typed in her card number on the phone, the system took her directly to an Operator stating, “You must talk to a representative immediately“.
After a long conversation where my wife was asked about various transactions that had gone on with her card, she was told that her card had been “frozen” because of a suspicious transaction in New York State (where neither my wife nor I have been to in the past little while). Â Since no transaction even showed up (so far) on the on-line banking, I am impressed by the alacrity of TD bank card security system in dealing with this fraud, however, I am now very concerned about my own cards.
As you know I replaced my TD Card because it was cracked (no not stolen, physically damaged) and inadvertently secured things a bit more (since I got a new card with a new number and such), however there was a story last week that in my area of Ottawa there have been hundreds of folks who have had their bank cards cracked and had moneys stolen from their bank accounts, so I believe I may be going and getting a new debit card myself (my own version of bank card security).
Question of the day: Have you had your credit card or bank card defrauded in the past little while?
A similar thing happened to me couple of years back with my credit card. When I called the credit card company – apparently they wanted to sell me a new product! (well, she didn’t put it that way) and they were trying to contact me on my old phone number (I hadn’t updated my new cell number).
Fortunately, I had another card to complete the transaction at the time.
I once got the cash at Home Depot and when I passed my credit card it displayed some code and the cashier said she had to have her manager call the bank. Pretty much as she finished saying that the bank call my mobile phone and asked “Are you at Home Depot trying to pay $123.45?” I then passed my phone to the cashier, who entered some other code, and that was it!
I was pretty impressed.
And it’s also encouraged me to make sure my financial institutions can reach me – I don’t hesitate to keep my contact information up-to-date and complete.
That is a very scary experience to have. it is a shame that there are so many scammers out there.
All that effort, directed in the right direction, could help to make a better world.
Instead, we get credit card fraud.
Glad that you bank caught this problem and you were safe from another tragedy.