I Hope Dinner Was Good

We are one of those couples that puts everything on the credit card. Everything. And then we pay it off at the end of the month. The reward for this is airline miles, which have taken us to Hawaii for free twice already and will likely do so again. You get the idea.

So each month when the statement arrives, I scan the amounts and where the charges were made just as a safety precaution. As should you. Twice in the last 10-15 years, we have had our credit card number stolen. Once we caught the charge on our statement - it had been used to purchase an airline ticket. The second time, Southwest Airlines called US, to see if it was really us trying to charge an airline ticket. Obviously, it was not.

Okay, pause in the story - can we submit this to a stupid theives show or something? Really? Because you have to show ID to travel on an airplane. It's not like it is hard to trace the fraudulent charges!

Back to the story. So yesterday, my credit card bill shows up. I open it, knowing the balance will be low because we've been really good about cracking down on spending. Imagine my surprise to see a number that was MUCH higher than expected! I started reading down the list. 1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7!!! SEVEN charges, ranging from $220 to $391, to a restaurant in Addison, Texas. A total of $2,082.72 worth of charges! To the same restaurant.

I called the bank, they filed a fraud investigation, cancelled the cards and are sending us new ones. Which is a huge pain because we won't get them for 5-7 days and then I have to change all the auto charges that we do each month. (Like I said, we charge everything for miles!)

The guy at the bank said that they can tell whether it's been swiped or the numbers just punched in, and ours had been swiped. That means someone made a counterfeit card with our number. He continued that the counterfeit cards are often low quality and after a few swipes, they stop working and they toss them and go on to the next. He said they have a high number of counterfeit cards that come out of Texas. He did agree that it was strange that the charges were all for the same place, as usually they see a shopping spree that starts and then suddenly stops.

Hubs and I figure either someone was repeatedly taking groups of people there, or equally, if not more possible, it's an employee that was ringing up false charges every few days and then taking the cash.

All I can say (besides a mouthful of bad words) is that if they were really eating there, I hope dinner was good.

***Ally
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