Goodbye Credit Card Number

This post has had updates, check the bottom of the post

I’ve had the same card number for a few years now. In fact the damned thing was going to expire in May, but thieves had to beat me to the punch. A purchase was tried against a spice extraction company in Kalamazoo, Michigan today for a total of $6.33. The charge was declined because my card’s security department is the shiznit (more about that in a bit).

The really unfortunate thing here is that I’m going to be without a card for a week. For a guy that doesn’t normally carry cash and uses this card for everything this is going to suck. Especially since my gas tank is about 1/2 and I’ve only got rice and veggies for food… ok, the food part could be worse, I like rice and veggies.

Back to my card security department. Usually when I’m doing some heavy purchasing at places I don’t normally visit, I get a robocall from them asking me if charges were made by me. Usually it’s a matter of 5 minutes where I have to press 1 to accept the charge, but today I had to press 2 a few times to hear the ‘more information’ part and then 3 to dispute the charge; which forwards me to a real person.

The agent told me that the company the charge was tried against has been flagged in their system as a possible fraudulent purchase for a few days now and that they were initially declining all charges attempted against that company because of its now bad history.

They also will auto-decline transactions if you travel more than 500 miles without notifying them of your plans. I remember going through this in California a few years ago after not telling my bank that I was going to be travelling for business. They declined my card until I called my bank to let them know I was going to be travelling. My bank would then call the card company to let them know to open my card up for location purchases in California. Also, they’ll shut off the card if an invalid expiration date is used in an online purchase until the cardholder calls them (which has also happened to me).

I like this feature. Yes, it’s a pain, but as I found out today it saved me a lot of time, frustration, and money.

A call to the company in question (I’m going to refrain from posting it here, because they’re a valid company) forwarded me to their 2nd shift call center where I talked to an associate that told me they had received an email that morning from management stating that cards were being charged to their merchant account and denied. Also they would probably be receiving calls regarding the fraud from the cardholders and that they should try to take their name, location, type of card, and purchase amount down for further investigation.

Obviously before I gave out the information to them I did a bit of digging and realized that they are in fact a multi-national corporation with a long history of working with the food industry as well as pharmaceutical industry to provide them with spices, coloring, and natural flavors. In fact, they don’t even have a spot to enter your credit card information on the site. The associate told me that they only deal in bulk with businesses and that if a credit card is used (which it hardly ever is) the amounts are rarely under $1,000. I was also told that I was the fourth or fifth person that the associate had talked to about this exact problem and also that he had just gotten off the phone with someone from Tennessee. Other associates had also fielded calls regarding stolen cards.

Apparently the email the employees got said something about Mastercard and Visa cardholders that had recently traveled to or live on the east coast.

This company hasn’t done anything wrong, it’s the thieves that attempted the charges somehow in an attempt to test the cards. This is the reason I’m not posting the name, phone number, and website of the company. If you really want the information for whatever reason, you know how to contact me.

Hopefully once I get my new card this will be the end of it and the start of memorizing another card number/exp date/CVV|CVC code.

Update 2/3/10:

I just got off the phone with my brother. He got a call from his card security company today because of a charge to the same company.

I’m going to post the name of the company now, even though they aren’t at fault. You need to check your statements for charges from this company: Kalsec Inc. I want to repeat though, that they are not at fault. Assumption: Someone is using the company’s name/phone number on a merchant account that isn’t related to Kalsec. Here’s their linkedin profile

If you see the charge on your bank statement, call the number on the back of your card and dispute the charge.